VENOM: A Complete Tonal Misfire With No Sense Of Fun

Opening tonight at a multiplex near everyone:

VENOM (Dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2018)

To get this straight, this isn’t a Marvel movie – it’s an “In Association With Marvel” movie. That means that it’s not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; it’s the beginning of Sony’s Marvel Universe because Sony owns Spider-man, and Venom started out as a character in the Spidey-verse.

Or something like that. Anyway, I only knew Venom from SPIDER-MAN 3, in which he was played by Topher Grace, as I’m pretty comics illiterate, so I had no real expectations for this origin story. I was just hoping for a fun sci-fi action picture, but what I got was this terrible, tortured slog – an ugly, sticky, tangled mess, much like its title character.

Tom Hardy, with a strained American accent, plays Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist with a TV show (think Anderson Cooper as played by Jeremy Renner), who loses his job after going after evil genius billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed). This also ends Eddie’s engagement to his love, Anne (Michelle Williams with long straight blonde hair that doesn’t move), who immediately leaves him.

Meanwhile, there’s been these alien symbiote things that have been taking over people’s bodies wrecking havoc and Ahmed’s Drake is trying to control them in his Life Foundation lab which is built into a mountain side across the bay from San Francisco as we see in countless establishing exterior shots. Jenny Slate (SNL, OBVIOUS CHILD) plays one of Drake’s scientist assistants who decides to be a whistle blower and expose her boss’s deadly experiments with the help of Eddie, who she brings to the lab.

You know what happens then – Brock gets this thing “up his ass” (his words), and becomes embedded with powers which makes him a sweaty, always hungry, spastic, obnoxiously over-the-top jerk, who take out leagues of attackers with black, shiny shard like arms thrusting from his body. It’s not pretty.

Eddie also hears the symbiote, who hates being called a “parasite,” talk through him in a garbled, jarring voice (Hardy’s voice modified) that goads him on, puts him down (calls him “pussy” when he takes an elevator instead of jumping out a window of a high rise), and throws out one-liners, many of which fall flat.

The rest of the narrative is un-engaging, and poorly paced as it goes through the motions of a motorcycle chase through the streets, battles with a bunch of standard issue black-clad thugs, a count-down to a launch that must be thwarted, and tons of empty spectacle made up of unimpressive CGI.

VENOM is a complete tonal misfire which can be largely blamed on its dreadful, witless screenplay by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, and Kelly Marcel which even tries to make “Have a nice life” be a burn more than once. Even at its most watchable, the whole movie just feels off. Hardy does his damnest, but just doesn’t gel with the character – either character of Eddie or Venom, and at times his hyper acting made me cringe with embarrassment for him. However, I blame the material because I’ve seen him do way better before.

Despite it being a dud, fanboys will just have to see it because you know completism, and there’s, of course, a few stingers – a mid-credits scene that has an intriguing cameo, and an extended post credits teaser for the animated SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE movie coming out this December.

Those tagged on bits are actually fun, but that so calls attention to how all the VENOM nonsense that preceded them so wasn’t.

More later...

Casey Affleck Carefully Carries The Moving MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Now playing at an art house or multiplex that's probably in your vicinity: 

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

(Dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

Honestly, Casey Affleck never really made much of an impression on me before. He’s done some solid work in a bunch of films, especially as the lead in his brother Ben’s GONE BABY GONE, but I never really thought of him as one of the better actors of his generation or anything.

His impressive performance in writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s third film, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, definitely changes that, and helps me to understand fully why there’s major Oscar buzz brewing.

Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a sullen janitor for an apartment complex in Quincy, Massachusetts, who we meet as he does his rounds. We get his daily routine – he takes shit from tenants, he gets shit about his attitude from his boss, and he ends the day getting shit-faced and starting fights at his neighborhood dive bar.

Then one day, Lee gets a call that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, playing a guy with his same last name - deal with it) had a heart attack and is in the hospital, and he immediately jumps in his truck and travels to Manchester by the Sea, the small seaside town where Lee previously lived we learn from flashbacks.

Lee gets to the hospital to find that his brother has died, and that he needs to see about taking care of arrangements which includes looking after his 16-year old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

At a meeting with his brother’s lawyer (Josh Hamilton) about the will, Lee is stunned to find out that he’s been made Patrick’s legal guardian, and we are even more stunned to see Lee’s flashbacks to the tragic incident that killed his two daughters, and destroyed his marriage to his devastated wife, Randi (Michelle Williams).

This, the film’s central sequence, is heart wrenching to endure, but extremely necessary as afterwards the strong sense of what tortures Lee can be felt in every Affleck affectation. Lee’s reluctance, or fear, to be a father figure to Patrick makes for some awkward moments between them, but they are real feeling portrayals of tension between family members dealing with a difficult transition.

As Affleck’s Lee is the dominating protagonist, Williams’ Randi gets a lot less screen-time, but the actress does a lot with it. Randi, now remarried and pregnant, calls Lee to ask if it’s okay if she goes to Joe’s funeral. Lee says it’s fine, and they hug when they encounter each other at the ceremony. They also run into each other later, but it would be a Spoiler to touch on that any further.

Anyway, Lee and Patrick argue over where they’re going to live as Lee doesn’t like the idea of relocating from Quincy so the film last act deals with how these people come up with a plan to go forward.

At one point, Patrick wants to go live with his mother (Gretchen Mol), a recovering alcoholic gone devout Christian who’s now living in the suburbs with new hubby Rodney (Matthew Broderick), but after an uncomfortable dinner scene, that doesn’t seem to be an option.

The unpretentious, and moving MANCHESTER BY THE SEA takes its time getting to its moments of insight, but it’s never boring along the way. It’s a well paced, lovingly detailed portrait of people trying to move forward even when they have no clue as to how.

Affleck’s carefully measured performance is indeed Oscar worthy. I may be realizing now that what he does may be so subtle that I’ve just never seen it before.

Williams also inhabits her part with conviction and the appropriate pathos. It may be a glorified sideline role, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she scored a Supporting Actress nomination as other brief but potent performances have garnered the same (see Beatrice Straight in NETWORK, and Viola Davis in DOUBT).

In addition, Hedges succeeds in being a not too self conscious representation of a modern teenager - which is no mean feat. 

In general, the excellent work that Lonergan, the cast, cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, and composer Lesley Barber have all done here deserves all the accolades and Academy Awards it will likely get.

Now, I must note that there’s controversy surrounding a sexual harassment case against Affleck over alleged behavior on the set of I’M NOT HERE, his odd 2010 mockumentary with Joaquin Phoenix, that threatens to derail his Oscar chances.

Since it’s been settled, I doubt this film will have the same sad fate as BIRTH OF A NATION, because Affleck’s offences are less extreme than Nate Parker’s, and because the idea that Affleck’s character here is a damaged soul plodding forward after a horrible mistake is what makes this the intensely relatable, realistic experience that it is.

More later...

OZ: Not A Bomb But No Magical Masterpiece Either

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Triangle area:

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL 
(Dir. Sam Raimi, 2013)

At one point in this movie, Sam Raimi’s lavish prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” when James Franco as the title character is making his way through the Land of Oz, I half expected him to run into a gang of Hobbits. These lush green 3D fantasy worlds can really look alike, you see.

Raimi is counting on familiarity here, with plot points matching the beats of the 1939 original (even has an extended black and white opening), but as keen on the details as he and his crew are, OZ feels like just another souped-up fairy tale update, interchangeable with the kind of projects Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have been doing for the last decade or so. 

It's a notch above, say, Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but not enough of a notch that makes it anything special. If it really was something special, it wouldn't be releasing at this time of year.

Franco certainly puts in an energetic performance as carnival magician con-artist Oscar Diggs, especially when he finds himself in a hot air balloon caught in a tornado. That's when he calls upon some 127 HOURS-ish method skills. Unfortunately the film's comic thread of Franco reacting to fantasical events with a modern day wiseacre delivery goes down as badly as it did in YOUR HIGHNESS.

On his journey on the Yellow Brick Road through the Dark Forest to Emerald City, Franco meets a cast of characters including some counter-parts to folks he knew back in black and white Kansas including Zack Braff as Finley the Flying Monkey (a CGI-ed monkey sidekick in a bellhop uniform, mind you), Michelle Williams as Glenda, Mina Kunis as Theodora (looking, at first, positively like a porcelain creation), China Girl (an actual porcelain creation via CGI voiced by Joey King) and Rachel Weisz as Evanora. 

The trio of beauties, Williams, Kunis and Weisz all become witches (one good, two bad), with Kunis getting transformed the most into the iconic green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West who screeches at the top of her lungs, and yes, gives us an ample sampling of that famous cackle. Kunis does her best, but still seems miscast, and the story-line of how she feels wronged by Franco isn't satisfyingly fleshed out.

The premise of a selfish scoundrel finding redemption by becoming what others believe in, in this case, the Munchkins, the tinkers, and the farmers of Oz thinking that Franco is their wizard savior from the reign of the Wicked Witches and using his trickery he becomes just that, is a well worn one that packs very little power in this all too conventional family friendly fairy tale.

There's a sometimes jarring disconnect between Franco and the artificial landscape surrounding him. I haven't been as aware of the heavy use of green screen since the STAR WARS prequels. In one bit, another allusion to the original WIZARD OF OZ, which has Franco and Williams travelling in bubbles in the sky, it was hard not to visualize the actors stumbling around on a sound stage - the desired effect of experiencing a different world sure wasn't happening there. Raimi's SPIDER-MAN movies are much more visually convincing.

OZ isn't directly based on any of L. Frank Baum's original Oz novels - it's supposed to be set a few decades before the first one ("The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" from 1900) - so it's a prequel to both the books and the 1939 movie, but despite the efforts of the capable cast, the savvy director, over 20 writers (that's right), and hundreds of computer animators it comes off more like glorified fan fiction than canon.

Still, it's not a total bomb; it's passable entertainment if you don't go in expecting a magical masterpiece (and if you're a Raimi fan you'll enjoy the Bruce Campbell cameo). It also may inspire some kids to seek out Baum's books, and watch the 1939 classic so there's that. 

More later...

BLUE VALENTINE: The Film Babble Blog Review

BLUE VALENTINE (Dir. Derek Cianfrane, 2010)

It's billed as "a love story", but BLACK VALENTINE is more accurately a toxic love story.

As a couple in the final stages of their marriage, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams go through the messy motions and as the film cuts back and forth from the beginning of their relationship to the present we see that they were doomed from the start.

In the present Gosling and Williams (who also co-executive produced the film) have a 4 year old daughter (Faith Wladyka) and live a fairly unremarkable existence in Pennsylvania- he paints houses; she works as a nurse.

In the past Gosling worked for a Brooklyn moving company and met Williams in a nursing home he was re-locating a senior to. Williams, there visiting her grandmother (Jen Jones) has a giggly spark when first meeting her later beau, and before long they're an item much to the chagrin of her former lover (Mike Vogel).

Williams is pregnant with Vogel's baby so there's that too.

In several sequences like one set in a blue-lit future-themed hotel room where Gosling hopes to re-ignite the couple's dying flame get into some emotionally wretching territory, but the film never wallows in misery.

Sometimes feeling like a series of sad snapshots of a doomed romance, "Blue Valentine" captures the tone and uneasiness of fading affection without a false move.

It's surprising that Williams got a Oscar Nomination for her work here and Gosling didn't. Don't get me wrong - William's nom is well deserved, but Gosling's restless intensity definitely equals hers.

A great Grizzly Bear soundtrack and graphic instances of sex and violence are intertwined inside the abstract construction of this film, but I bet what will linger more in the memory will be the raw moments between Gosling and Williams where they ache together yet still can not connect.

Like a heart made out of barbed wire, BLUE VALENTINE really stings.

More later...