Movie reviews: 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' is a mix of exhilaration and exhaustion

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Tom Holland in Columbia Pictures' 'Spider-Man: No Way Home.' (Sony Pictures via AP)

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME: 4 STARS

At the beginning of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the new two-and-a-half-hour-long superhero movie now playing in theatres, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) learns it’s hard to be a masked, crime fighter when everybody knows who you are under your red and black suit.

Exposed by supervillain Mysterio at the end of “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” Parker’s life has been turned upside down. And not in a fun way, as in 2002's “Spider-Man” when Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst shared an upside-down smooch in the rain.

That was harmless good fun.

These days, the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger’s newfound notoriety makes it impossible for him to balance his personal life and relationships with girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya), best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon), and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), in addition to his role as a world saving crime fighter.

“People looked up to this boy and called him a hero,” squawks J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons), the conspiratorial host of TheDailyBugle.net. “Well, I’ll tell you what I call him, Public Enemy No. 1!”

Some think he’s a hero, others regard him as a vigilante. As his identities become blurred, Parker turns to caped neurosurgeon and master of the mystic arts Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), for help.

“When Mysterio revealed my identity, my entire life got screwed up,” Parker says to Strange. “I was wondering if you could make it so it never did.”

Parker wants Dr. Strange to conjure up a spell to brainwash the world and make people forget he is Spider-Man.

It’s a big ask. “Be careful what you wish for,” Strange says, warning Parker that casting such a spell will tamper with the stability of space and time.

Sure enough, the spell blows a hole in the multiverse -- the collection of parallel universes with alternate realities -- and unleashes “universal trespassers,” the most terrifying foes Spider-Man has ever faced in this or any other realm.

There’s more. Lots more. Big emotional moments, lots of jokes, nostalgia and fan service, an orgy of CGI and Villains! Villains! Villains! The multiverse offers up a multitude of surprises, but there will be no spoilers here. Your eyeballs will dance and, depending on your level of fandom, maybe even well up from time to time.

The trippiness of the story’s interdimensional leaps, while entertaining, are secondary to the movie’s strongest feature: Spider-Man’s empathy. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a movie about second chances. Peter Parker doesn’t want to simply vanquish his enemies, he wants to understand them, to know why they behave as they do. By the time the end credits roll, the baddies may not be able to wreak havoc anymore, but not for the reasons you might imagine.

In real life, the world is divided by ideology and opinion. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” asks us to examine those differences, look for their roots and try to heal them. It does so with plenty of trademarked Marvel action and overstuffed bombast, but the core message of empathy and understanding for others is the engine that keeps the movie chugging forward.

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a mix of exhilaration and exhaustion. It is inconsistent in its storytelling, overblown at times and the finale is a drawn-out CGI fest, but when it focuses on the characters; the empathy and the chemistry between the actors, it soars like Spider-Man slinging webs and effortlessly zooms between skyscrapers.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY: 4 STARS

Don’t go to “Nightmare Alley,” a remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power film noir, now playing in theatres, for the warm fuzzies. Guillermo Del Toro’s new movie is as cold and icy as the season in which it is being released. Any movie that begins with the burning of a corpse and ends, well, you’ll have to buy a ticket to find out, isn’t exactly geared to make your season bright, but film fans should find this to be a gift.

Set in the days leading up to the Second World War, the story begins as drifter-with-a-dangerous-past Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) takes a job at a travelling carnival. Paid a dollar a day plus a hot meal, he does grunt work, putting up the big top tent and doing physical labour.

His gift of the gab soon earns him a promotion, working as a barker for the theatrical mystic Zeena (Toni Collette) and her magician husband Pete (David Strathairn). Stan is a quick study, and becomes an expert on how to bilk folks out of their hard-earned cash.

Longing for something bigger, he takes his own mentalism act on the road with the help of assistant and love interest Molly (Rooney Mara). It’s all fake, the two communicate through a series of veiled verbal clues, but audiences eat it up. They are making money performing at upscale nightclubs, but the offer of doing private readings for prominent people comes with a price tag Stan can’t resist.

Del Toro is known for creating intricate worlds populated by amazing people and creatures, but don’t expect a replay of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or his Oscar winner “The Shape of Water.” There are no supernatural elements in “Nightmare Alley.” The monster here is Stan’s cold, hard ambition.

Cooper is in slickster mode here, playing Stan as a smooth-talking manipulator whose bad deeds stack up like some sort of ethically challenged Jenga game. He is an enigma. Willing to do whatever it takes to survive. He is a flawed but coldly ambitious man whose eyes are always trained toward the future. It is his biggest asset and, ultimately, his downfall.

Cooper does a good job at exposing Stan’s layers. He’s a complicated character, an amoral seducer with a seemingly charming disposition, and Cooper only allows brief peaks at his desperation and brutality.

As good as Cooper is, it’s Cate Blanchett as the femme fatale psychiatrist Lilith Ritter who steals the show. From her overpainted red lips and seductive nature to her quick intelligence and vulnerability, she is the film’s most interesting and dangerous presence. Nice office too -- it’s an Art Deco lover’s paradise.

Above all though, “Nightmare Alley” is Del Toro’s film. He doesn’t need one of his trademarked creatures like the Pale Man or The Asset to shock. Here he takes a methodical, detailed approach to the story, gradually building to some shocking violence and psychological horror. His interest here is the sinister, not the supernatural, and while the first hour gets bogged down with set-up and a major plot point is telegraphed (NO SPOILERS HERE!), his ability to create atmosphere is singular. Nobody casts a shroud of menace like Del Toro.

“Nightmare Alley” takes its time to set up its dark pleasures, but emerges as a memorable tribute to film noir with images that will stick in your mind long after the theatre’s lights are switched on.

RED ROCKET: 3 STARS

Director Sean Baker has made a career of chronicling life on the margins. His lo-fi, low-budget and naturalistic films “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project” are about outsiders but never look down on their subjects. His latest, “Red Rocket,” now playing in theatres, continues his trend of neither celebrating or condemning the choices made by his edgy characters.

In “Red Rocket,” former MTV DJ Simon Rex is Mikey Saber, a once-celebrated porn star whose career in front of the camera is over. Broke, he goes home to Texas City, a dustbowl town he said he’d never step foot in again, yet here he is, crashing at his estranged wife Lexi’s (Bree Elrod) house.

When his porn star past gets in the way of landing a straight job, like working at the local fast-food joints, he makes money selling dime bags. When he meets 17-year-old Strawberry (Suzanna Son), a clerk at the local doughnut shack, he thinks he’s found his Lolita, a ticket back to the porn biz.

“She’s smoking hot,” he says. “She made the first move. She has no dad, and here’s the kicker, she lets me sell weed to the hard hats at her work. Does it get any better than that?”

“Red Rocket” is a story, loosely told, of the flipside of the American Dream. Saber is a con man, a hustler, all talk, no action (at least outside the sheets). A narcissistic loser, he has ideas but not the wherewithal to see them through and, unfortunately, he drags those around him down on his desperate climb up. Rex makes him compelling, bringing humour and pathos to a complete scumbag.

“Red Rocket” doesn’t feel as tightly constructed as Baker’s other’s films. It shares the same Marlboro-stained soul, but this time around his examination of choices people make simply to survive flails almost as much as its characters.

FLEE: 4 STARS

“Flee” is a rarity, an animated documentary. A mix of personal and modern world history, it is a heartfelt look at the true, hidden story of the harrowing life journey of a gay refugee from Afghanistan.

The bedrock of this boundary-pushing doc are 20 taped conversations Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen had with his childhood friend Amin (a pseudonym). As an adult, Amin is about to marry his partner Kasper when he sits down to talk to Rasmussen about how his life brought him to this moment.

He recounts how his father disappeared and his brother was conscripted to join the army in 1979 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. As a boy, he fled his war-torn country with his mother and siblings, to find a new, safe life. They landed in Russia on a tourist visa just after the Soviet Union had fallen, leaving the country corrupt and dangerous.

Time passes. As the Russian police track him as an undocumented resident, he embarks on the most dangerous journey yet. With the help of an older brother in Sweden, Amin puts himself in the hands of human traffickers for a traumatic, uncertain journey to Copenhagen.

Except for a few minutes here and there of archival news footage, “Flee” uses animation to tell the story, but this ain’t the “Looney Tunes.” Rasmussen used the animation to protect Amin’s identity, but like other serious-minded animated films like “Persepolis” and “Waltz with Bashir,” the impressionistic presentation enhances the telling of the tale. The styles of Rasmussen’s animation change to reflect and effectively bring the various stages of Amin’s journey to vivid life. It is suspenseful, heartbreaking and often poetic.

But it is Amin’s heartfelt, urgent storytelling and Rasmussen’s prodding that make the story of resilience and survival so riveting. From the gruelling trek to a new land to guilelessly seeking out a cure for his homosexuality in Denmark, “Flee” proves itself as a unique work of art based on a true, traumatic and far too common refugee experience.