October movie reviews
In theaters:
I was not a real big fan of the first Venom. Thought it was a largely unwelcome throwback to the pre-MCU days of comic book flicks, made into something watchable by a very entertaining lead performance by Tom Hardy. Hardy is pretty much the reason to watch this sequel too, which lands in that same middle ground of mediocrity (yet it's going to outgrows Black Widow 🤮). The main villain this time is Woody Harrelson and he is always fun to watch, although he doesn't really have a lot to do here. Naomie Harris is so wasted that I didn't even realize til the credits that it was her. Michelle Williams pops back in for a couple fun scenes. The movie earns some points for brevity, as it is only 90 minutes long, but it's just a lot of noise and CGI. But that credits scene...wow! Welcome to the official MCU Venom. Hope that leads to an increase in quality for your movies.
DEAR EVAN HANSEN
An already notorious fiasco, this musical is about a high school kid (Ben Platt) whose classmate commits suicide and through a convoluted series of misunderstandings is thought to have been the deceased's best friend. The problems with this film are too endless to chronicle. Let's start with the fact that Platt is nearly 30 (and looks it) but is playing a meek 17 year old. He is unbelievably creepy to watch. The character is basically a sociopath too, manipulating a grieving family and his whole school just so he can get close to the dead kid's sister (Kaitlyn Dever) who he has a crush on. Oh, but the movie doesn't present this character or the situation that way. No, we are supposed to be sympathetic towards this monster, and find the whole affair heartwarming and inspiring. I guess it's because he is a nerd and has no friends and all sorts of anxieties, but fuck that. Nerds can be bad people too. Again, there is ZERO self awareness from the movie (sounds like the play it's adapted from has the same problem). There are good actors here left out to dry (Dever, Julianne Moore, Amandla Stenberg, and Amy Adams, although she is genuinely bad in this). The music stinks too. Not a single memorable song, and the staging of the music is bad. It's all bad, and the handling of the material is just gross. This movie made my skin crawl.
For a more thorough dissection of this awful, awful film: https://youtu.be/8quWUSZCW5g
THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK
Okay, I have only ever watched a little bit of The Sporanos, so I am in no way the target audience for this prequel film. But taken as just a mob movie it's decent. The young Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini's son) is actually very much a side character. It doesn't do anything that other movies in the genre have done better, but doesn't do them poorly either.
THE LAST DUEL
Screw you, America, for letting this excellent Ridley Scott film bomb. One of Scott's best in years, this has the glorious Jodie Comer as a woman in the 1300s who accuses the Adam Driver character of rape. The story is shown from 3 POVs: Comer, Driver, and Matt Damon as Comer's knight husband. Ben Affleck also has a showy role as a flamboyant count. The film climaxes with the titular duel, which is a great sequence (and very tense since I did not know the ending to the true story), but I thought the whole thing was a gripping drama. Damon and Affleck (in their first co-writing gig since Good Will Hunting) are both strong, but Driver and especially Comer are the standouts. The fact this made 10 times less than what Halloween Kills did opening weekend makes me nauseous.
LAMB
Oh that A24. Their latest is an Icelandic film, starring Noomi Rapace as half of a sheep farming couple who one day sees one of the sheep give birth to what we soon see is some sort of lamb/human hybrid, who the couple come to raise as if their own child. So yeah, it's weird, but I was kind of with this one. I feel like maybe it's about having a child with a disability and being accepting of that. Strong performances. The scenery is great. It's sold as a horror movie although it is never scary. The ending is one of those that is very deliberate about not giving any answers.
DUNE: PART ONE
I've been aware of Dune since a friend in high school who was obsessed with David Lynch convinced me to watch Lynch's original film version of this book. That film is a rather notorious disaster, with cause. It's an incomprehensible mess. This big budget Denis Villenueve version is VASTLY superior. I didn't love it. It's extremely laborious, and Hans Zimmer's bombastic score drowns out tons of dialogue, including bits that seem to really matter. But at least in this version you can mostly follow the story, or at least get the gist of it. Visually the film is amazing, with grand scope and excellent and realistic fx. Even the big sand worms look like actual real creatures. Everyone in the cast is very sullen and serious, but a few performances pop, particularly Timothee Chalamet (who finds a fresh approach to the young hero), Rebecca Ferguson, and Jason Momoa as one of the only bits of levity in the film. Zendaya is mostly wasted, appearing almost exclusively in dreams, but her role is sure to expand in part 2. And thankfully there will be a part 2, cause this film has no real ending.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
This new Edgar Wright film is already growing on me. This was one of the most original films I've seen in a while, a blend of horror, psychological thriller, musical and dark comedy. I'd call it Midnight In Paris meets Black Swan meets serial killer thriller. This is a movie that plays with that "is it a dream or is it real" trope that often annoys me, but not here. It helps that the visuals are amazing. The great Thomasin McKenzie is fabulous in the lead. The otherworldly Anya Taylor-Joy is great in a smaller, trickier role. Wright stages a few clinics where the two women sometimes interchange within a scene. It does have that issue that a lot of movies in these genres do, where the more things are explained the less compelling it becomes. But it's a pretty excellent film. Scott Pilgrim will probably always be my favorite Wright film, but this might be in the running for #2.
Everything else:
CRY MACHO
This came and went very quickly from theaters so I ended up watching on HBO Max. This is Clint Eastwood's latest, where he is an aged cowboy who travels to Mexico to bring his friend's son home. Once the movie dispenses early on with a lot of the plot mechanations, it turns into an easygoing and meandering road movie. It's not bad. Clint is still an easy watch. There's a nice little romance in there. Some of it plays like a lesser Gran Torino but it ain't bad.
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