Practically flawless

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2019)

Into The Spider-Verse is unrelentingly creative and daring, pulling off in spectacular fashion a story so strange and unique it would have been deemed box-office suicide ten years ago.
Every scene looks like it's been ripped straight out of a comic book, with a dotted halftone texture decorating every object and speech/thought bubbles appearing in the background. Each frame of the movie has been carefully crafted to be as creative and engaging as possible, and the film even occasionally acknowledges the virtual camera.
On a similar note, Into The Spider-Verse is filled with self-referential and meta humor, which fits in very appropriately. Three of the main six 'spidermen' are purely comic relief characters, but they're all effective in their own ways and are mostly parodies of different genres and clichés, with Spider-Noir being my personal favorite (and Spider-Ham close behind).
The animation itself was the most meticulously crafted and unique I've seen since The Lego Movie. The animators played around with focus, colour, framerate, time lapses, split screen, onomatopoeic text and much more. Even if the plot and characters had been awful, this film would have been worth seeing for the visuals alone. The ending in particular is very reminiscent of Doctor Strange, and even takes some queues from 2001 in terms of its cinematography.
Every major character had just enough depth and motive to make them interesting, and their backstory would always be revealed in an engaging way. This would sometimes make up for it being somewhat formulaic - Kingpin is a prime example here. Initially, the trailers had me slightly worried about the script and voice-acting, but most of the more clichéd material seemed to be purely for the trailers.
The rap-themed soundtrack was largely appropriate and added a lot to certain scenes. Also, the after credits scene is probably my favorite ever. It has to be seen to be believed - definitely stick around for it.
This might be my favorite Spider-Man film ever, and certainly the success that Sony has been waiting for. It's a visual feast, and a pretty solid screenplay as well. I'd recommend it to everyone.