Movie reviews: 'Spider-Man' a wild pop culture pastiche of visual styles

This week, pop culture critic Richard Crouse reviews new movies: 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,' 'The Boogeyman,' 'Bones of Crows.'

A wild pop culture pastiche of visual styles that jumps off the screen in ways that will give your eyeballs a Charles Atlas-style workout, it is a full-body experience on the big screen.

Gwen Stacy (voice of Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore) return from 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Both are the offspring of police officers, and both have secret identities as Spider-Woman and Spider-Man, respectively.

When Gwen becomes estranged from her father, she disappears into the Spider-Verse, a series of connected but independent universes, each with its own brand of Spider-People. As The Spot (voice of Jason Schwartzman), a villain covered in portals that allow him to transport from place to place, threatens to shred the very fabric of the Multi-Verse, Gwen and Miles go interdimensional to fight the new threat.

There they find Spider-HQ, sort of a Quantico for all various and sundry Spider-Folks, including Spider-Woman (voice of Issa Rae), Spider-Punk (voice of Daniel Kaluuya) and alpha arachnid Miguel O'Hara (voice of Oscar Isaac). When Miles inadvertently disrupts the Spider-Verse, he learns an important lesson about the sacrifice required to be a Spider-Man.