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Movie Curiosities: Gladiator II
November 29, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
It’s no secret that I’ve had some issues with Ridley Scott in the recent past. He makes movies that are too overblown for anyone’s good (as with House of Gucci and Napoleon). He refuses to course-correct for any mistakes (his overzealous devotion to keeping Prometheus in the pop culture canon). And yet on some level, Scott is such a relentlessly stubborn old son of a bitch that I have to respect him. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Anora
November 18, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Sean Baker has flown under my radar for way too long. While I’ve certainly heard of The Florida Project, Tangerine, and Red Rocket, I somehow never got around to any of those movies. That said, even a cursory glance of his filmography (the aforementioned Red Rocket and Tangerine, plus Starlet) will show that sex workers are a recurring interest to Baker. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: A Real Pain
November 17, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
A Real Pain comes to us from producer Jesse Eisenberg, here making his writing/directing feature debut, courtesy of fellow producer Emma Stone. It’s a movie about a couple of Jewish cousins from New York, flying out to Poland to take a Holocaust tour and reconnect with their roots. Not a complicated premise. So let’s move on to the lead characters. Read the rest of this entry →
Movie Curiosities: Heretic
November 12, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Heretic comes to us from the writing/directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Probably for the best that this movie isn’t getting promoted on their names, because nobody wants to be reminded that 65 ever happened. Better for everyone that we all forget that disgrace and move on. I’m sure we all want to give Beck and Woods a second chance so they can prove their script for A Quiet Place wasn’t a fluke and the both of them aren’t hopeless fuckwits punching above their weight class.
Instead, this movie is getting primarily hyped as the horror debut of Hugh Grant. Honestly, I’m not surprised. If you’ve been paying attention to his most recent career moves — most notably with Paddington 2 and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — you’d know that Grant has been having fun as a deceitful heel for some time now. It was really only a matter of time before he parlayed that skill set into something like this.
I’m more interested in the involvement of Sophie Thatcher, the “Yellowjacket” alum who’s steadily and quietly been building an impressive resume in horror cinema, as with The Boogeyman and the upcoming Companion. I might add that she’s co-starring with Chloe East, another promising up-and-comer. Best of all (given the premise of the film), both ladies grew up as Mormons and have since left the church.
I’m honestly intrigued. Let’s see if Beck and Woods keep from shitting the bed this time.
The premise starts out simple enough. Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton (Thatcher and East, respectively) are a couple of young teenage Mormons out proselytizing, and they get a lead on someone who recently inquired about joining the church. Thus they go out to visit Mr. Reed (Grant), who lives in a quaint little house on the remote outskirts of town. They get stuck inside during a storm, their cell phones stop working, the front door won’t open, and Mr. Reed turns the tables in a big way. Thus we’re off to the races.
In other words, what we’ve got here is a horror movie setup in which a hapless victim pool is subject to the cruel whims of an unknowable psychopath running the show. The Saw franchise is probably the most famous example, but I’d say this movie has a lot more in common with The Menu. Both movies are a lot more “prestige horror” in their presentation, for one thing. But more importantly, the goal isn’t merely survival, but in figuring out the method to the madness. As with Chef Slowik, Mr. Reed isn’t merely a homicidal psychopath or a sexual deviant, nor is he after money or cheap thrills. The pain and suffering is only ever treated as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
Mr. Reed isn’t a physical threat. He’s an intellectual threat. Potentially even worse, he’s a spiritual threat. After so many years of theological study, Reed’s convinced himself that he’s found the One True Religion and he’s on a mission to convert the missionaries who would’ve tried to convert him. Or maybe he’s just fucking around to prove a point about religion in general.
Either way, it speaks volumes that Reed is trying to prove his point by matching wits with a couple of teenage girls too young to know who they really are or what they really believe. If Reed honestly believed his own bullshit and wanted to firmly prove it, you’d think Reed would try picking on someone his own size. Challenging a couple of teenage girls to an intellectual duel after trapping them in his house and scaring them to the point where they can’t think straight, Reed comes off as more of a bully. Then again, if Reed was trying to make a point about how religions brainwash kids who simply do and believe whatever they’re told before they’re old enough to know better… well, I don’t want to give Reed any more credit than he deserves, but it would fit the theme.
Reed has a lot to say about religion. Half the movie (not an exaggeration, we don’t even get to the real cinematic filth and gore until the halfway point) is Reed lecturing about religion and spirituality in his own charismatic whackadoo style. It really is Hugh Grant’s performance that elevates this movie into horror, because it’s impossible to tell how full of shit he really is or how dangerous he could potentially be. Of course, it certainly helps that he’s acting opposite Thatcher and East, both of whom are distressingly good at playing “scared out of their precious little heads”.
Perhaps most importantly, the spiritual debate is genuinely fascinating once it gets going. Would you rather believe that we’re all a bunch of horny dust motes who briefly live and die without any greater point or purpose; or would you rather believe that there’s some unimpeachable deity who sees all and knows all, who could easily end all war and suffering, and simply chooses not to for whatever unknowable reason?
Reed also makes a big deal out of iterations, how each subsequent religion — particularly in the Abrahamic Judeo-Christian-Islamic lineage — is simply a copy of a copy. Reed argues that each subsequent iteration takes us further away from the truth. He never stops to consider that maybe each iteration and denomination is building on top of what came before it, drifting in some direction closer to the truth. More importantly, Reed points out that Jews are a relatively miniscule global demographic, attributing to poor marketing what might be attributed to… y’know, centuries of antisemitism and the occasional genocide.
Another highlight comes when Reed brings up the inevitable question of polygamy in the Mormon faith. To be clear, while polygamy was widely and publicly practiced in the early days of Mormonism, the church has gone to great lengths in distancing itself from the practice for over a century. But Reed uses this topic as a case in point for a greater paradox with regards to religion: Does a true and holy sincerely held belief still count as such if it’s discarded for the sake of political convenience or necessity? How exactly does the infallible Word of God become obsolete because of mortal affairs?
All throughout the movie, Reed claims to give Barnes and Paxton a free and fair choice, only to show that it’s no choice at all. Every reveal shows Reed to be a deeply cynical and self-centered bastard, particularly with his views on religion and religious leaders. The downside is that precisely because the guy is stuck so far up his own ass and convinced of his own genius, he loses sight of the intangibles. I don’t even think he’s mentally capable of understanding how religion brings people together and offers hope through difficult times.
It’s genuinely fascinating to see the characters talk about such huge existential topics with such intelligence and candor. I’ll grant the film offers more questions than answers, but that’s perfectly understandable when the questions are this huge. The unfortunate downside is that the characters spend so much time talking that there isn’t much in the way of scares or kills. Hell, the miniscule cast size should be sign enough that there’s not much blood or violence here.
This unfortunately cuts into the suspense, because we know perfectly well that the film has to keep all three characters in the picture and nothing too awful can happen to them until the third act at least. As a direct result, the film is primarily kept engaging through the intrigue of figuring out what Reed is thinking and planning. Yet even that comes with a significant downside, as Reed is clearly so much smarter and better-prepared than the two young unarmed and uneducated girls too scared to think straight. This conflict is so one-sided that there’s no way our protagonists could possibly win without one or two bullshit reversals in the climax.
Heretic is a film that gets by on intelligence. The cast is strong enough and the arguments are compelling enough that it’s almost enough to distract from how the horror aspect is underwhelming bullshit. That said — unlike so many “fool’s prestige” movies we’ve seen this year — at least I can respect a prestige horror film with the guts to come out with a legit artistic statement. This movie is actually about something, far more than most other movies we’ve seen recently and certainly more than anything else Beck/Woods has ever done.
It’s definitely a movie worth seeing, but not worth paying full price. I can happily recommend it for a second-run screening or a home video viewing.
For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.
Movie Curiosities: Small Things Like These
November 11, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Buckle up, everyone. If you’re in a bad place right now because of the recent election, this one might hit pretty close to home.
Small Things Like These was helmed by Tim Mielants, a respectable TV director who hasn’t really made any films of note. Likewise, screenwriter Enda Walsh hasn’t written much of anything more notable than a third of that bugfuck animated 2022 movie, The House. No, the real star here is producer Cillian Murphy. Though we’ve also got Ben Affleck and Matt Damon producing through their new Artists Equity shingle.
The upshot is that this one came right outta nowhere.
We lay our scene in the mid-80s, in a rural Irish town where all life and education more or less revolves around the local convent. Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a dedicated family man with five young daughters (!!!) and a business selling coal to the locals. Unfortunately, times are tough for a local entrepreneur and it’s all Bill can do to keep the lights on.
The plot starts going with the gradual realization that bad things are afoot at the local convent. What kind of bad things? Well, to be perfectly blunt, it’s the Magdalene Asylum scandal. Women all over Ireland are being abducted and put to slave labor, their children forcibly taken from them and sold for “adoption”. But none of this is directly explained or addressed until the dedication title card at the end.
Put it this way: You know those movies about a scrappy underdog who fights to investigate wrongdoing by a massively powerful organization that everyone else is too afraid of? Erin Brockovich is of course the definitive example, but we’ve also got Spotlight, Concussion, Dark Waters, that kind of thing. Hell, Philomena was another story in this lane that dealt with the Magdalene asylums.
Now imagine one of those movies, but it’s only the first half-hour stretched out into 100 minutes. That’s what we’ve got here.
It’s 100 solid minutes of Bill slowly coming to realize that something is wrong, even though he doesn’t have any kind of proof. Hell, he doesn’t even know for a certainty exactly what’s wrong, except nobody at the convent seems particularly happy and the nuns are strangely aggressive in shooing him out. Hell, the local Mother superior (played by Emily Watson) outright tries to buy him off at one point.
Even stranger, it’s like everyone in town knows that something is going on at the convent and nobody wants to talk about it. The most emphatic case in point is Bill’s wife (Eileen, played by Eileen Walsh), who repeatedly nags at Bill to keep his head down, mind his business, take whatever money comes in, and don’t rock the boat for fear the convent might deny their daughters a decent education. And while she does have a point that taking any kind of action is risky, Bill isn’t comfortable with the notion that doing the right thing is a luxury afforded only to the rich. It also sucks that the family apparently has so little that they’re only barely scraping by and yet so much that they can’t afford to lose.
And again, it’s not like Bill is in a position to do anything about this. He’s not a politician, he’s not a cop, he’s not even a journalist. Literally the only thing he can do — the only thing he really knows how to do — is vent his frustration by shoveling coal. And also by aggressively scrubbing his own hands raw at the end of the day.
What we’ve got here is 100 solid minutes of a man struggling with his conscience. There’s nothing he can do, and yet he can’t do nothing. It’s a sympathetic position to be in, especially so soon after the recent election. (*ahem*) And yes, Cillian Murphy is especially good at playing the brooding central man, internally conflicted over his scruples (Oppenheimer, anyone?). Even so, the fact remains that we know that something is awful is happening in the background, nothing about it is ever definitively exposed, and our protagonist is unable and/or unwilling to take any action against it. This makes for a long and miserable viewing experience.
Even so, it bears mentioning that the film does end on a marginally hopeful note. After all, doing literally anything is a victory when everyone says there’s nothing you can do. Even the smallest gesture can be meaningful, especially between two people who barely have anything to give at all.
Small Things Like These is one of those movies I respect more than I like. It’s the kind of movie I’m glad I saw once and only once. The film is a harshly bitter medicine, a hopeful message wrapped in a depressing movie made for depressing times.
This was made of, by, and for the hardcore arthouse crowd. This movie will find its audience, and its audience will be happier for it. But I don’t think anyone else will have the patience for this picture, and I doubt that even its most stalwart supporters will say that it was fun or easy to sit through.
For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.
Movie Curiosities: Conclave
November 10, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
I am kicking myself because I couldn’t get to this sooner. A political thriller set against the backdrop of selecting a new pope, famously one of the most secretive and high-stakes elections in modern politics. The cast is top-notch, the screenwriter has a respectable history in cinematic thrillers (as with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 2011), and the director made that gobsmacking All Quiet on the Western Front adaptation in 2022. Hallelujah, holy shit, what have we got here?
Conclave opens with the death of the pope. It’s not exactly clear how he died, and there are questions as to what exactly happened in his last day alive. Then again, if there were suspicions that the pope was fatally ill, there would certainly be political reasons for withholding that information. Regardless, the throne of the Holy See is now vacant and the cardinals must now figure out who among them will be the next pope. The most prominent candidates are as follows.
- Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is a bigoted conservative blowhard who wants to take the world and the Catholic Church back to the days of the Crusades.
- Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) wants to make history as the first African pope, but that’ll be tough with his own controversially conservative track record.
- Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) doesn’t seem to have much of any agenda aside from whatever will get him the papacy.
- Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) heads up the progressive wing of the Church. He’s not even in this to win, he just desperately wants the others to lose.
Basically, what we’ve got here is a political allegory about what it takes to be worthy of power. The film is heavily preoccupied with the unfortunate truth that those who most want power are typically and paradoxically those least qualified to have it. The setting further compounds this, as the involved parties are expected to be paragons of virtue and they’re competing to be the spiritual standard-bearer for over a billion people.
The upshot is that we’ve got roughly a hundred old men trying to outmaneuver and backstab each other while maintaining their spotless and pious facades. All of this calls attention to the simple fact that none of these men are saints or demigods — they’re flawed and fallible mortals, with their secrets and sins and temptations just like anyone else. In turn, this begs the question of which sins and flaws would make a cardinal unfit for the papacy, especially since (for obvious reasons) the Catholic Church is highly averse to scandal nowadays.
But then the ending comes. Without getting too deeply into spoilers, this movie takes the ingenious step of bringing up a secret that isn’t really a sin. A secret that would only be cause for shame within the restrictive and archaic rules of the Catholic Church. In other words, the secret that could destroy the cardinal’s career would arguably be the exact same secret that makes this cardinal the perfect one for the job.
All of this is compounded by the highly secretive nature of the selection process. Ostensibly, the cardinals are supposed to be kept isolated so there won’t be any outside influences affecting their decisions. But maybe that’s a bad idea. Because the current setup means these cardinals are stewing in their own self-important paranoia from start to finish. Also, if they’re closing their eyes to outside events, they might potentially lose sight of some important need-to-know information that might render a cardinal unfit for office. (See my earlier point about scandals.)
Most importantly, if the cardinals are sequestered to the point where they can’t focus on anything but the chalice, they lose sight of why the chalice really matters. This is ultimately about who gets to lead a world full of Catholics, after all, and how Catholics are going to interact with people of other different faiths (and those of no faith). These cardinals can’t effectively lead the world by holding themselves apart from it.
All of that said, this movie is more than a simple power struggle. There are three prominent wild cards here to stir up the intrigue and keep the plot moving forward. One of them is Cardinal Benitez (newcomer Carlos Diehz), the Church’s newest cardinal. The details are unclear, but the late pope made Benitez a cardinal shortly before passing, and nobody knew about it until shortly before the conclave. The second major wild card is Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), representing the local nuns. Agnes and her sisters are everywhere, keeping everything running, but they’re supposed to be invisible and separate from the whole process. Which of course means that Agnes is a badass who knows more and is capable of more than anybody wants to think about.
The third wild card is our protagonist. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is the dean in charge of overseeing the conclave. Which means if there’s any reason why a cardinal is unfit for the papacy, he’s responsible for making that reason known and ensuring that the best possible candidate gets the job. Yet he’s also technically a candidate for the papacy and thus has reason to eliminate any possible competition. I need hardly add that he’s responsible for maintaining the sequestration while also looking for any outside influence or secrets that might corrupt the outcome. Have I mentioned that this system is outdated and inherently flawed?
For what it’s worth, though Lawrence caucuses with the liberals, he does his level best to run the show in a fair and even-handed manner. Others may doubt his motives or his methods, but his heart is in the right place and he sincerely wants the best for the Catholic Church with absolutely zero desire to take the papacy for himself. Which paradoxically might make him the best one for the job.
There’s a lot going on in this movie. It’s genuinely impressive how the film makes so many relevant and incisive statements about democracy and politics, in a setting that makes the statements so much more pointed and yet so universal. It certainly helps that the plot is a damn fine potboiler, slowly but surely peeling back the layers to show the dark rotten underbelly of the characters and the greater system.
That said, the plot was undeniably more effective in those moments when it focused on the characters. There’s a domestic terror subplot that doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it should. The intrigue about the circumstances of the late pope’s death kind of fizzles out. I didn’t care for the scenes of Lawrence playing detective, especially since it’s his assistant (Monsignor O’Malley, played by Brian F. O’Byrne) who does most of the heavy lifting offscreen. But the payoff to that detective work, Lawrence’s confrontation scenes with that new information, are all fantastic.
Lawrence spends more or less the entire movie chasing down leads to uncover truths about the other cardinals in the race, but these all turn out to be disparate storylines. There’s no central mystery to drive the plot forward, which is kind of a huge missing piece for a suspense thriller. Throwing out a half-dozen disparate storylines without anything to tie them all together is disappointing and disorienting, and it drags down the pacing considerably.
Even with that caveat, Conclave is a strong political drama. It’s a film overflowing with intelligence and heart, with insightful and impactful statements about democracy, power, and why they matter. The established talents are all working wonders within their respective comfort zones, but the true unsung hero here is Carlos Diehz. The newcomer holds his own against so many seasoned veterans, gracefully performing to excellence as the strong beating heart of the movie.
I get how the religious trappings might be a turnoff for anyone who isn’t a Christian or a Catholic, but the backdrop really only serves to place the story within its own self-contained nation with its own culture and values and rules. (Which the Vatican technically is, to my understanding.) And anyway, I want to stress emphatically that the film is less about Catholicism and Christian values than it is about politics and who should be put in charge. And those exact priorities are a powerful thematic statement in itself.
If you haven’t seen this one yet, I totally recommend it.
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Movie Curiosities: Here
November 7, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
What the hell is Robert Zemeckis still doing here?
I’ve more than said my piece about Robert Zemeckis by this point. With all due respect to his past successes and innovations, he’s cooked. This should’ve been firmly established with the triple-whammy of Welcome to Marwen, The Witches (2020), and Pinocchio (2022). Any one of those movies would’ve been enough to destroy literally any other director’s career immediately. But I guess Zemeckis somehow still has enough goodwill left over to indulge in another new cinematic experiment.
Thus we have Here, a non-sequential film that hops between various time periods spanning from the extinction of the dinosaurs clear up to the present day. The gimmick is that the camera never moves at any point in all those 65 million years, and the film primarily takes place in the living room of a house built around the camera. So naturally, the main selling point is the use of cutting-edge CGI and AI algorithms to portray different people at different ages across different time periods.
Of course the other big draw is the reunion of Zemeckis with his Forrest Gump co-leads Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. They play the central couple of the most prominent recurring storyline, growing up in the post-war era of Zemeckis’ treasured childhood memories (see also: Back to the Future). We also get spirited performances from Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly in the roles of Hanks’ parents.
That’s it, folks. That’s pretty much the whole movie. It’s not even worth going into detail about the various storylines because the characters are all one-dimensional at best and none of the storylines go anywhere. As a tech demo, it’s impressive. But as a narrative, the storylines are too jumbled and disconnected to make a decent story. As a thematic rumination on the fleeting nature of time, the characters don’t sit still long enough to drill down into anything more insightful than “time flies”.
I’m seriously at a loss for anything else to say about this movie. It’s 100 minutes of ingenious transitions, beautiful CGI, and tedious melodrama. The jokes aren’t funny and the drama isn’t compelling because the characters and conflict are paper-thin.
Even the stellar de-aging effects seem less impressive upon the recollection that the AI is being used on actors with careers spanning several decades. These are actors whose faces have been filmed from every possible angle in every possible lighting at every age from adulthood onward. Any LLM worth using would have an easy time after training with that much data.
At this point, I feel compelled to point out that the script was co-written by Eric Roth. The man who co-wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and both of Deni Villenueve’s Dune movies. The man is not known for brevity. Roth is the screenwriter you go to for huge grandiose epics that pack five hours of material into a three-hour runtime. And I don’t know how Roth confined himself to only 100 minutes this time, but it feels significantly longer.
Here feels like a bleeding-edge tech demo that got expanded into a feature-length blockbuster because there was no other way to procure the necessary budget. While the film doesn’t exactly overstay its welcome at only 100 minutes, it really should’ve been half an hour long at most. There simply isn’t enough story, character development, comedy, or thematic insight to justify going any longer.
This one isn’t aggressively bad, but it’s not worth anyone’s time, certainly not when Oscar season is coming up. Not recommended.
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Movie Curiosities: We Live in Time
November 4, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
We Live in Time is a romantic drama starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. If your ticket isn’t already sold, I don’t know what else to tell you. These are two absurdly good-looking A-listers at the top of their game, and the both of them seem ready-made for a romantic pairing.
This slam-dunk casting really is the single most crucial reason to see the movie. Their chemistry is scorching from start to finish. The both of them are so damned good together, all I needed was a hundred minutes of watching them together. I want to see them talk with each other and make each other laugh. I want to see them naked and fucking. I want to see them fight and argue with each other. I want to see them care for each other and raise a kid together.
The whole movie is about watching these two characters go through an entire relationship from start to finish — in non-sequential order — and the two lead actors sell every last second. Their performances are so compelling and the both of them are so impossibly beautiful together that it’s more than good enough to justify seeing the movie.
Even so, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s definitely worth talking about.
This is the story of Tobias and Almut, respectively played by Garfield and Pugh. He’s a corporate drone in the middle of a rather bitter divorce and suffering a comically pathetic run of bad luck. She’s a world-class chef who’s mere days away from opening up her own restaurant. And that’s when the both of them first meet. (There’s a car wreck involved. Like I said, Tobias is pitifully unlucky.)
About three years later — but still within the first ten minutes of runtime — Tobias and Almut are now homeowners raising a kid together (Ella, played by Grace Delaney). And Almut gets hit with a cancer diagnosis. So now she’s stuck with chemotherapy because the tumor is inoperable. Put it together with the title of the film and it’s clear there’s only one way this story’s going to end.
(Side note: I don’t recall if the film ever specified exactly how much time has passed, but Wikipedia says it’s roughly three years, so let’s go with that.)
As I briefly mentioned earlier, we are watching the full width and breadth of this brief relationship, from the meet-cute beginning all the way up until Almut finally dies. And we go through it all in non-sequential order. On the one hand, this takes a lot of dramatic tension away from the proceedings, as we know how so many of their rockier stretches will work out. On the other hand, this ain’t no escapist chick flick.
Even before they get to the terminal cancer, Tobias has to get over his post-divorce romantic hangups and Almut has to deal with the trauma from her deceased father. The both of them have to figure out when and whether they want to have kids, the whole process of conceiving turns out to be difficult, Almut goes through a really tough pregnancy, and I don’t even want to talk about the actual childbirth when it finally happens. Tobias and Almut go through some real shit together, and it helps to know that all these rocky episodes will end well. Especially because we know their luck will eventually run out.
The various flashbacks are pretty much an informative diversion from the central driving crisis, which does play out in sequential order. See, while Almut is literally on the drive back from getting her cancer diagnosis, she gets invited to represent the UK in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or. Which means that she would have to last through the most exhaustive and prestigious cooking championship in the world, while also going through chemotherapy. Oh, and Tobias wants to get married before Almut is too dead to say “I do.”
Basically put, Almut would rather burn out while Tobias would rather she fade away. Tobias wants her to stick with the chemotherapy, but Almut is afraid of what her quality of life would be like after the fact. She’d rather have six happy and productive months, rather than twelve months (or however many years) wasting away due to a treatment that might not even work. And there’s Ella to consider as well — she’s young enough that these few months could be the only memories she ever has of her mother, if any. Almut wants her daughter to see her and remember her as a champion, not a chemotherapy patient.
Of course, there’s the obvious counterpoint that beating cancer would also be a significant source of pride. More importantly, Almut is spending so much time away from home and training for the competition — even if Ella only sees her mother in a wheelchair with a needle in her arm, at least she’s seeing her mother at all. Oh, and let’s not forget that Almut has her daughter and her loving fiance and a whole mantle full of trophies and certificates that she’s compiled over a massively successful (albeit relatively brief) life. It’s tough to see why she can’t simply lay down and accept everything she has as good enough. It’s especially tough for Tobias to see, and he understandably takes the point rather personally.
As the title heavily implies, this is very much a movie about making the most of whatever time we have. It’s a tough question that will vary wildly on a case-by-case basis, especially since we never really know how much time we have. But in the end, the film seems to suggest that the best possible answer is for the both of them to support each other. There is sacrifice and acceptance and squabbling involved, but Tobias and Almut each settle into their best possible selves simply by being what the other one fell in love with.
At this point, I feel compelled to reiterate that this isn’t all heavy character drama. I want to repeat emphatically that Garfield and Pugh are adorable together, and their innate charm — individually and together — is a massive draw. Of course, it certainly helps that we’ve got Lee Braithwaite on hand in the role of Almut’s loyal assistant, a valuable comic relief and sounding board for our female lead. On the other side, Tobias gets similar comic relief assistance from his father, played by Douglas Hodge.
We Live in Time is a charm offensive. The movie isn’t here to say anything new or provocative or mind-blowing. It’s not here to reinvent the romantic drama, it’s here to be a damned effective romantic drama. The casting, the script, the direction, the editing, the sex scenes, the comedy… everything about this movie was built with the sole focus of developing two powerhouse romantic leads. This movie was specifically and expertly built to be a tearjerker, damned good at making us fall in love with these characters so we can mourn for them at the end. And at only 100 minutes, the film hardly overstays its welcome.
If you want a date night recommendation, absolutely go see this in theaters. Otherwise, it’s a rock-solid home video recommendation. For most filmgoers, this would be far more powerful with a more intimate home viewing. Either way, it’s definitely worth a look.
For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and BlueSky.
Movie Curiosities — Venom: The Last Dance
October 27, 2024 in Blogs, Curiosity Inc.
Before I get started, there’s something I want perfectly clear: I am flat fucking DONE with this shit.
If you or anyone else on this godforsaken planet is still on board with Sony’s efforts at a Spider-Man cinematic universe without Spider-Man, I don’t know what to tell you. Everything I have to say, I’ve already said it a dozen times. I am out of things to say and out of fucks to give. And Sony apparently feels the same way.
The very day after Venom: The Last Dance premiered, Sony announced that they were moving forward with a new Spider-Man film in the MCU canon, with Tom Holland and director Daniel Destin Cretton both making their long-awaited returns to Earth-199999. Meanwhile, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is still being indefinitely held until some strategically valuable point in the future, and the live-action “Spider-Man: Noir” spinoff TV series with Nicolas Cage is still in production. Also, Sony publicly parted ways with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the two superstar producers who were Sony’s last best hope at righting the ship.
Sony has sent a clear message: Whatever plans they have for Spider-Man moving forward, they will be focused on Spider-Man. Sony finally learned their lesson and the decks are being cleared. Not that I ever gave a shit about this grand experiment, but if Sony keeps acting like they’re done giving a shit, why would anyone start now?!
So why are we here with Venom: The Last Dance? Why was Venom the only Spider-Man supporting character with a standalone movie to get a sequel, and even a trilogy? Well, a lot of that has to do with Tom Hardy, the only lead in this failed megafranchise who ever had enough star power and producing savvy to make his own franchise happen. There’s also the matter of producer Avi Arad, who’s been so aggressively bullish on Venom for so long that he singlehandedly destroyed Spider-Man 3 to try and make Venom into a cash cow. Which might have been another inadvertent factor: It’s an old established rule that if a fan-favorite character is done dirty in the first attempt at a film adaptation, those fans will be frothing at the mouth in the hopes that the second attempt will get it right.
That was never in the cards for Venom.
On paper, I can understand how Venom is so iconic and marketable that he might be the only Spider-Man supporting character capable of powering his own franchise without Spider-Man. But the fundamental problem is that Venom’s origin story, his power set, his motivation… literally everything about Venom stems from Spider-Man. At the most fundamental and foundational level, there can be no Venom without Spider-Man.
Oh, and there’s also the teeny little stipulation that the Sony execs wanted to adapt an uber-violent antihero with a four-quadrant tentpole franchise. Because R-rated properties have consistently and faithfully been adapted into successful and satisfying PG-13 movies NEVER FUCKING EVER.
The bottom line here is that the fanbase for these movies doesn’t exist. Nobody gives a shit about Tom Hardy’s take on this character. These movies aren’t like Steel or Howard the Duck or Batman and Robin — they’re not bad enough to live on as guilty pleasures or cult favorites or cautionary tales. And they’re certainly not good enough or interesting enough — much less creative enough — to leave any kind of impact on the history of the genre. This isn’t even a case like Ben Affleck’s Batman or Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, because Tom Hardy got everything he wanted out of these movies. There is no untapped potential left to explore there. These movies are forgettable mediocrities, and their only staying power in the zeitgeist is due to Sony’s dogged persistence.
Venom: The Last Dance is trying to position itself as a grand send-off to the series, not unlike how Wolverine & Deadpool recently closed the book on the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel films. Trouble is, nobody wanted that send-off. This era never earned that send-off. There is no aspect of this whole “Whoops! No Spider-Man” megafranchise experiment that wanted or needed such a tearful goodbye. If there’s any part of Sony’s Marvel era that was worth that closure, we already got it with Spider-Man: No Way Home!
Anyway, now that we’re here, let me see how much of the dogshit premise I can sum up.
The premise begins with Knull, voiced by an uncredited Andy Serkis. Knull was the creator of the symbiotes, right up until they rebelled and locked him away in some nebulous prison beyond the stars. Unfortunately — for reasons far too convoluted to recount here — Venom and Eddie Brock accidentally created the Codex, a key that will allow for Knull’s release.
I hasten to add the crucial point that the Codex is only intact so long as Venom and Eddie are both alive and bonded together. And it can only be used while Eddie is in full Venom form. I won’t pretend that any of this makes any kind of internal logic, because this whole damn plot device was obviously constructed backwards from the premise of “Venom and Eddie have to die and/or split up or the world will end.”
I should add that while Knull is trapped in an extradimensional prison and stuck in some contraption that makes him completely immobile, he’s somehow capable of creating new alien life forms and teleporting them throughout the cosmos. Thus we have the xenophages, indestructible killing machines specially designed to hunt for the Codex and eat any life form that gets in the way.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the American government has responded to the ongoing symbiote crisis by decommissioning Area 51, moving all their extraterrestrial research to the massively upgraded and far more secretive Area 55. We’ve even got the Imperium, a shadowy government agency that tracks and contains alien activity. Enter General Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), your archetypal militant nutjob whose preferred means of dealing with aliens is to shoot first and sneer at any naive lunatic who even wants to ask questions. Said lunatics would be Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple) and her assistant, Sadie Christmas (Clark Backo).
The bottom line is that Eddie/Venom are now on the run from an alien apex predator and an off-the-books alien containment division, while they’re also running from the feds and the local police after the events of the first two movies. And somehow, Eddie — who’s in Mexico at this point — decides the best course of action is to go back into the USA and travel clear across the country so he can blackmail a judge into clearing his name.
That alone should tell you how stupid and contrived this whole plot is. Even with everything we’ve already covered, there’s so much bullshit to unpack, I don’t know where to start.
First of all, I respect and appreciate that Juno Temple is aging artistically. It’s tough for any actor to make the transition away from playing characters in their teens and early twenties, and she seems to be doing a graceful job of it. Good for her. That said, her character was given way too much useless backstory and her character wasn’t as compelling as the filmmakers seemed to think or hope. It absolutely doesn’t help that Sadie is given so many similar functions in the story, she’s played by a more charismatic actor, and her flabby backstory is limited to an ostentatious Christmas tree pin that she insists on wearing out of season.
Strickland is another huge problem. This character only has one note throughout the whole movie, only barely and grudgingly developing a second dimension at the end of the climax. This is an aggressively stupid character who is consistently wrong about everything, either completely ineffectual or actively regressive, and not even Chiwetel Ejiofor — who’s clearly trying as hard as he can — is capable of making this a character we can take seriously. This is like if Jon Turturro played his character in Transformers (2007) totally straight, it was never going to work.
Then we have the xenophages. Though really, it’s only the one xenophage, as we don’t get any others until the climax. Two big problems here. First, the xenophage is only a giant alien beast. Which means it has no dialogue, no personality, and no motivation aside from hunting and eating. Nothing more than a giant CGI alien. Yawn.
The second and arguably bigger problem is that the very first time we get introduced to this thing, the xenophage gets literally thrown into a jet engine. The xenophage gets chopped up and blown up into a million little pieces that get dropped 40,000 feet to the ground… and then the xenophage simply reassembles itself and keeps going like nothing happened. Which means that all the action scenes are entirely useless, because we know perfectly well that there’s nothing any human or symbiote can do to hurt this thing. In turn, this inevitably means that whatever solution is ultimately found to deal with the problem, it’s guaranteed to be contrived horseshit.
Oh, and remember the general whose first and only answer to aliens is to shoot at them? No matter how many times it’s been explicitly shown that symbiotes and xenophages both shrug off bullets like hydroxychloroquine against COVID? To repeat, Strickland is a pathetic joke and it’s a damn shame he wasn’t played as such.
But hey, it’s not like the xenophage is the Big Bad, right? This is really a conflict with Knull, after all. Yeah, about that…
Knull is barely in this movie. He does literally nothing except for sending xenophages to Earth. All the other characters talk a big game about how we should all be afraid of Knull, but he’s never anything more than a glowering CGI effect. He’s got no plan, no motivation, and no backstory whatsoever. He’s a nobody. Yet this movie is somehow trying to position Knull as a Thanos-level threat. Just last week, writer/director/producer Kelly Marcel was talking up a big game about making Knull an overarching villain across multiple movies. BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.
The thing is, the characters spell out in clear detail exactly what would have to happen for Knull to escape. And after the events of this movie, those circumstances would be borderline impossible to replicate. More importantly, the film makes good on its promise and conclusively ends the Eddie/Venom symbiosis. And Carnage was explicitly killed off at the end of the second movie. Does Sony seriously want to move ahead without the two most recognizable and profitable symbiote characters in the canon? For that matter, do they want to move ahead without Tom Hardy when he was the only reason anyone remotely cared about these movies? Are they gonna try and build up Juno Temple and her character up to that level? Don’t make me laugh.
Seriously, show me where Knull could possibly fit into the direction where Sony is taking this franchise. He’s not going into “Spider-Man: Noir” or Beyond the Spider-Verse unless somebody wants to try and cram symbiotes and generic universe-destroying bullies into either one. And no way in hell is anyone going to try and fit Knull into the MCU. Leaving aside that it’s a totally separate continuity, who the hell needs Knull when Galactus and Doctor Doom are already on the way? And are we really wasting time with this shit when we still have to get the mutants into the MCU somehow?!
What I’m really trying to say here is that this movie has an antagonist problem. The villains in this movie are boring, and there’s no fun or progress to be had from engaging them. I don’t even mind that the action scenes (except for the climax) are so visibly truncated, because Venom is either mopping the floor with generic hapless baddies (without any trace of blood when he’s biting their heads off, naturally) or he’s wasting time grappling with an alien beast who can’t be hurt.
Sometimes, the villains are so useless that our leads have to dumb themselves down just to keep the plot moving forward. My favorite example comes when Eddie/Venom actually arrive in Vegas. They go to a casino for no good reason. They run into Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu), who’s there for no good reason. And then — against the repeated and vocal warnings of Eddie, because they both know it’ll attract the xenophage directly to them — Venom takes his full form for a dance number with Mrs. Chen for absolutely no fucking good reason.
In this whole movie, the only supporting characters worth a damn are the eccentric family of tourists (played by Rhys Ifans, Alanna Ubach, Hala Finley, and Dash McCloud) heading out to see Area 51 before it gets demolished. Yes, their most important contribution to the plot is that they arbitrarily get into trouble so Venom has to save them. But perhaps more importantly, these are total strangers who give the film some much-needed heart. They help to remind Eddie of his human side, which is particularly important, given the distinct possibility that Eddie may have to go back to being a full-time human in the immediate future. And after all the shit that’s gotten wrecked over the course of this series, it’s worth asking if Eddie is even capable of building a new life as an ordinary mortal.
As with the prior two movies, the only aspect of this movie that completely and totally works is Tom Hardy. Granted, this particular take on Eddie/Venom is its own thing and it bears virtually no resemblance to the source material. Even so, Hardy makes a meal out of playing a put-upon schlub cursed with talking to himself, and he sounds like he’s having a blast in the recording booth.
The whole “road trip” structure of this movie — hell, the entire movie itself — was specifically built so Eddie/Venom would be centered at all times, and all the other characters would only be sounding boards briefly passing through. The approach does a disservice to the other characters, and the villains are so especially disserviced that they can barely be considered characters at all. And yes, it does get rather obnoxious how the plot ties itself into knots trying to lift up the main characters and get them where the filmmakers want them to be for whatever reason. Even so, this was the only way it could’ve gone.
As with the previous two movies, Venom: The Last Dance is emblematic of Sony’s entire “Spider-Man megafranchise without Spider-Man” experiment. It’s so mediocre and unmemorable that the only reason anyone knows about it is because Sony put so much money and effort trying to convince everyone that it was a huge deal. It’s a boring movie that tries to deliver CGI action set pieces without any of the stakes or balance to make those sequences exciting.
But what really gets stuck in my craw is the part where this movie continues to entertain delusions of megafranchise viability, writing checks the filmmakers can’t possibly hope to cash. There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll see the Isabela Merced/Sydney Sweeney/Celeste O’Connor Spider Team before we ever see Knull come back. Hell, we might even see the Morbius/Vulture crossover happen before Knull comes back.
All things considered, it’s a mercy that this trilogy is finally over and all the relevant actors have come away from it unscathed. Now can we please stop pretending that anyone ever gave a shit about this franchise? Can we all just chalk up this trilogy as a massive waste of time and move on?
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