Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is astounding. Delivering a multiverse story in service of its characters rather than the other way around, directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson elevate this Spider-sequel with jaw-dropping craft and a keen deconstruction of the wall crawler’s metafiction. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the closest a movie has ever come to the joy of reading a great comic book, splash pages and all.

February 15th saw the premieres of not just one, but two super-team television shows. The first, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, is based upon a popular Dark Horse comic book by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá; the second, Doom Patrol on the DC Universe streaming platform, is adapted from a long-running DC Comics series. And while both shows focus on a ragtag team of superpowered misfits coming together to fight evil, one is clearly better than the other in the way that it translates its source material to screen. Mild spoilers ahead for both The Umbrella Academy and Doom Patrol.

Apologies that this post is about a week late, as I was busy making sure the A Year in Film 2018 feature came in before the New Year, but here is the list of Strange Harbor’s best films of the year. 2018 was a phenomenal year for cinema, and a year that saw the rise of genre filmmaking into the mainstream canon - films such as Mandy, Thoroughbreds, and Hereditary occupied top ten lists along with more popular fare such as Green Book and A Star is Born in equal measure. The following list is an updated version of the article, The Best Films of 2018 So Far, from earlier this year.

Sony Animation Studios and directors Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, and Bob Persichetti go buck wild with the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Ditching continuity altogether while still keeping things layman-friendly, Into the Spider-Verse is a rollicking adventure that is equal parts thrilling, funny, and moving. Fast-paced with a lot of heart, the film is refreshingly quirky with a bombastic aesthetic and a charming sense of humor. In addition, the introduction of the Afro-Latino Miles Morales onto the big screen scores another home run for diversity this year. Minor spoilers ahead...