Sinners (2025) | REVIEW

Michael B. Jordan and Miles Caton in Ryan Coogler’s SINNERS — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Ryan Coogler — Screenplay by Ryan Coogler.

Ryan Googler should be a household name. He burst onto the scene with his incredible feature debut Fruitvale Station, revitalized the modern American sports drama (and an iconic franchise) with Creed, broke box office records with the iconic superhero film Black Panther, and took on the daunting task of making a sequel to his superhero epic, even though it would be without its leading man with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, following Chadwick Boseman’s tragic passing. Coogler has proven himself to be a commercially viable filmmaker with something on his mind and the skill with which to pull off his ideas breathtakingly. But now he’s finally made something unique and original, despite the genre tropes his film willingly embraces, following years upon years of working with true stories, established characters, or within the Marvel machine. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is an original vampire period film of which he insisted on having full creative control and future ownership, with a deal that resembles what Quentin Tarantino, among others, have done before him. That was a deal worth fighting for, because Sinners is the kind of instant classic original genre film that will blow people away.

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) | REVIEW

Miles Morales as Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson — Screenplay by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham.

With 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a vast team of storytellers caught lightning in a bottle, as they managed to make a film that not only captured what makes superhero and Spider-man films so electric and fun to watch, but they had also made an animated film with a groundbreaking animation style. At the same time, they managed to introduce the world to Miles Morales — a once lesser-known Spider-Man — in a way that made him an instant fan favorite. Into the Spider-Verse is one of the best animated films of the 2010s and arguably the century at the time of writing. Since then, a lot has happened. The idea of a multiverse film has become so mainstream that the Academy Awards has even given Best Picture to a multiverse-focused film. To add to that, we even got a live-action Spider-Man multiverse film with Spider-Man: No Way Home. It would be totally understandable to think that the idea of multiverse storytelling is played out and that no one is clamoring for more Spider-People. Thus, recapturing that same lightning in a bottle was not anywhere close to being simple. And yet, that is exactly what has happened with Across the Spider-Verse, the direct sequel to the 2018 animated hit. Across the Spider-Verse is not just more of the same.

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REVIEWS: MCU Series on Disney+ – Year One (2021): ‘WandaVision,’ ‘Loki,’ ‘Hawkeye,’ and More

Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel Studios’ WANDAVISION, exclusively on Disney+. — Photo: Disney+ / Marvel Studios.

Disney’s Marvel Studios — the masterminds and architects of the global cinematic sensation, the Marvel Cinematic Universe — now also spends a lot of time on TV/Streaming shows due to the arrival of the streaming service Disney+, which Disney knows can thrive on several shows aimed at the Marvel and Star Wars fandoms. In the first year with MCU content straight-to-Disney+, Disney and Marvel Studios gave us four live-action series and one premier animated show. In this article, I’ll take a look at each of the ‘first-year’ shows in bite-sized reviews.

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REVIEW: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Theatrical Release Poster – Sony Pictures Releasing

The following is a review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman

The late, great, legendary film critic Roger Ebert opened his review of my favorite Spider-Man film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, with the line: “Now this is what a superhero movie should be,” a sentence that feels pretty appropriate to use today when describing the first of, likely, many theatrically released Sony Pictures Animation Spider-Man-related films because Into the Spider-Verse is a special movie in virtually every way imaginable.
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