Sam Raimi's Spiderman (1) holds a tricky and mythological place in my personal film canon. This was in a time before the good superhero film. Before MCU burnout, before Iron Man (2008), before Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and even before the conception of the character of Miles Morales.

I was likely introduced to the wallcrawler through Spider Man: The Animated Series, which was on our telly most weekends. It had a wicked theme song, a pulpy, punchy art style and…

It is, of course, a film with a stellar sound, and a smell something like a real reverence for jazz at large. I am called back to Lindsay's dad in Freaks and Geeks, the Buddy Rich fan that sets Jason Segel on the right path, showing him the love that Jason Segel's own father could not. I get the feeling that Miles Teller's dad might once have been like Lindsay's dad.

Fortunately for us, the primary father figure now in…

The fact that someone (Noah Baumbach in this case) made a modern film in black and white and I didn't immediately hate it is either a testament to the rare quality of this film or to my total lack of media literacy.

The film is a lens into the wonderful and terrible stage of life where you are still figuring out what it is you want out of this bloody thing that no one even asked for. At the same…