Daily Archives: October 5, 2018

Film Review: Venom (dir. by Ruben Fleischer)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

VenomPosterAbout 20 years ago, a friend and I walked out of a movie theatre for some pizza. On the way to the Pizzeria, I raved about the movie we just watched.  The effects were awesome, and the main character was bad ass. My friend didn’t share the same sentiment, and over the dinner, he went on to explain everything that was wrong with the film. Bad CGI (for its time), 2 Dimensional Characters, and a pretty simplistic plot. By the end of my dinner, all of my joy was sucked away. I wanted to believe, deep down that I walked into a quality production, but there was so much room for improvement.

That film was Mark Dippe’s Spawn.

I mention this because after seeing Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, Spawn was the first film that came to mind. That makes sense, given that a lot of Venom’s genesis is from artist Todd McFarlane, who also created Spawn (and gave Spider-Man some of the best webbing I’ve ever known). There are parts of Venom I truly enjoyed, and I can say that there isn’t much of a problem with the acting on anyone’s side.  However, the levels of boredom in the film’s first hour will have you wanting to bring in a highly caffeinated drink to sip on, just to stay awake. The lady next to me yawned, which made me yawn and it just cycled through the audience. The good sequences are already visible in the trailers.

Here’s a clip of Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man Video Game (easily recommended) to give you a rough idea of how he is.

From a plot standpoint, Venom does a good job in giving us a story for how Eddie Brock and his Symbiote meet without factoring in Spider-Man at all. Comic readers remember the Secret Wars, where Spider-Man lost his suit and picked up a symbiote replacement. When the Symbiote proved dangerous, Peter Parker got rid of it and it fell into the hands of his former Daily Bugle nemesis, Eddie Brock. Together, they formed Venom, a beast with all of Spider-Man’s powers and Brock’s hatred of Parker. Venom plagued Spider-Man, who was incredibly dangerous because he was one of the few villains that didn’t set of Parker’s Spidey Sense. He could sneak up on him at any time, assume the likenesses of other people, and Parker would never see him coming.

The Sony Spider-Man series changed this up in Spider-Man 3, replacing the Secret Wars with more of a Blob-like story. Symbiote crashes to Earth, finds Parker. Parker decides to rip it off and it finds Brock.  In this new version of Venom, symbiotes already exist in space, and a corporation lead by Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) are trying to bring them to Earth to intermingle with humans. When investigative reporter Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) stumbles on the corporation’s evil plans, he accidentally joins with a symbiote and finds himself with a near insatiable hunger for the living.

You have the best 2 in 1 team up since Leigh Wannell’s Upgrade. I would not be opposed to a sequel for this if they tightened up the writing. Maybe that’s my problem. Both Upgrade and Venom are similar, but only one had an interesting character that looked like Tom Hardy (sorry, but Logan Marshall-Green does bear a resemblance).

Ruben Fleischer’s (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) direction is okay here. With Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Black Swan) at his side, Venom doesn’t have many problems there. With the exception of the final confrontation, the shots aren’t too blurry or hard to track when the action starts. Even though Venom is a visibly dark character, I couldn’t complain that scenes weren’t well-lit.

For me, the problem with Venom is that at an hour and 52 minutes, it feels like the first hour is just waiting for that symbiosis to occur. Eddie Brock doesn’t really become interesting until Venom appears (also voiced by Hardy), and that’s a rough thing to say, given the cast involved. We’ve both seen Hardy, Ahmed and Michelle Williams in better roles, but they really aren’t given any real meat here. The dialog is a little shaky in some places. Hardy pushes himself hard here, and you see how disjointed Brock gets as he adjusts to the changes. Brock as a character, however, doesn’t really have a lot going for him. Neither did Peter Parker or maybe even Steve Rogers, but there were elements about who they were that helped you to appreciate who they be became as superheroes.  Steve Rogers was a weakling with a good spirit, which made him a better Captain America. Peter Parker was a chemical whiz kid and came up with his own web-fluid. Brock just…well, reports. There’s a lot of boredom in that first hour. The best scenes are the interactions between Venom and Brock, full of cute banter. It’s like having an unwelcome guest wanting to meet your parents. It just took so long to get to that point. When it does, however, the movie improves. They do manage to get a lot right about what Venom can do.

The CGI in Venom is definitely good in some places. It stands as the best argument for another remake of The Blob. The symbiotes are creepy in their design and motion, slithering up walls and making their way through vents. Venom, in all it’s glory, is quite a sight to behold, towering over humans. It goes a little overboard over the last 3rd of the film. I can’t say I knew for sure what it was I was looking at, but that’s to be expected with some superhero films.

If you see the film, stay for the mid-credits scene, which teases a future character. Also stay for a near 5 minute sneak peek into Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

Overall, if you feel you have to see it in a theatre, by all means, do so. If you can wait for it to come out on Digital, that may be the best route.

Horror Film Review: Unsane (dir by Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Steven Soderbergh.

Seriously, I know that everyone in the world is always going on about how brilliant he is but I have to admit that I always approach his film with a bit of trepidation.

I mean, yes, Soderbergh can be brilliant.  He’s made some legitimately great films, some of the best that I’ve seen.  The Informer! holds up brilliantly.  So does Traffic and The Girlfriend Experience.  Even a film like Logan Lucky remains amusing on a second viewing.

And yet, at the same time, he can be one of the most annoyingly pretentious directors around.  Contagion was a raging bore and, with Haywire, Soderbergh squandered the potential of Gina Carano.  Che started out strong before turning into a dull Marxist tract.  With the exception of Out of Sight, his friendship with George Clooney always seems to bring out the worst instincts in both men.  And don’t even start with me about the Ocean’s films.  Have you tried to rewatch any of them lately?

Whenever I start a new Soderbergh film, I find myself wondering which Stephen Soderbergh am I going to get.  Am I going to get the Soderbergh who is a crafty storyteller and a good director of actors?  Or am I going to get the pretentious Soderbergh who always seems to think that he’s doing all of us favor by lowering himself to make a genre film?

With Unsane, which was released way back in March, I got both.

Claire Foy plays Sawyer Valentini.  A year ago, Sawyer was working at a hospice when the son of one of her patients became obsessed with and started stalking her.  Fearing for her life and realizing that the police weren’t going to be much help, Sawyer moved away from home and tried to restart her life.

Seeking help for dealing with her trauma, Sawyer makes an appointment with a counselor at the Highland Creek Behavioral Center.  What she doesn’t realize is that Highland Creek is a scam.  The papers that she signed at her appointment allow her therapist to hold her for a 24-hour evaluation.  When Sawyer resists and attempts to call the police, her stay is extended by seven more days.  Every time that Sawyer demands to be released, she’s judged to be a threat to herself and others and more days are added to her stay.  As another patient explains it, Highland Creek basically holds onto its patients until their insurance runs out.

If that wasn’t bad enough, things get worse when Sawyer meets the new orderly (Joshua Leonard).  He says that his name is George Shaw but Sawyer swears that he’s David, the man who has been stalking her.  Of course, no one listens to her when she tries to tell them.  After all, she voluntarily committed herself to Highland Creek….

Unsane received a lot of attention because Soderbergh shot the film in secret with an iPhone.  The end results of Soderbergh’s experiment were mixed.  At its best, this technique gives the film a gritty look and it visually captures the shaky state of Sawyer’s sanity.  At its worse, it’s a distraction that leaves you feeling that you’re supposed to be more impressed by how Soderbergh made the film than by the story being told.

Fortunately, Soderbergh gets two wonderful performances from Claire Foy and the reliably creepy Joshua Leonard.  Foy brings just the right combination of fragility and strength to the role of Sawyer and she gives such an empathetic performance that you get involved in her story even if Soderbergh’s style is often distracting.  As for Leonard, you’ll recognize him as soon as you see him.  He’s a character actor who specializes in playing off-balance people and he’s memorably menacing in this film.

I probably would have liked Unsane more if I didn’t always have the feeling that the movie was mostly made so that Soderbergh could show off.  Whenever I see one of Soderbergh’s “genre” films, I get the feeling that he’s looking down on the material and that my reaction is supposed to be one of, “Soderbergh’s such a genius that he can even make crap like this entertaining!”  (You get the feeling that Soderbergh might be willing to make a B-movie but he’d never be caught dead actually watching one.)  That said, regardless of the motives behind it, Unsane was actually an effective and twisty psychological thriller.

If nothing else, it was better than Haywire….

Horror Song of the Day: Prince of Darkness Opening Credits (by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth)

Posted on by Arleigh

Prince of Darkness

John Carpenter, as most long-time readers and visitors to the site will know, is one of my favorite filmmakers. While he has been in a self-imposed retirement these last 15 or so years from directing, his works for two decades prior have to be considered some of the best genre films.

While some of his films have been critically-acclaimed from the start, others weren’t treated as well when they first released. It would only be years later when genre fans would finally come to appreciate some of his lesser works.

One such film is Prince of Darkness. The second film in his unofficial “Apocalypse Trilogy”, this one would be lambasted by most film critics upon it’s release. Even fans of his films would mostly avoid this entry.

Yet, years later it has turned out to be one of his most underappreciated films. It’s soundtrack, one Carpenter did himself with assistance from long-time collaborator Alan Howarth, would become a favorite.

The expanded “Opening Credits” section of the Prince of Darkness soundtrack is a great example of the sort of mood Carpenter can create with his preferred usage of synthesizer and electronic keyboards when it came to composing his film’s soundtracks.

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead).  And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger  (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description.  They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.”  Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

Music Video of the Day: The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen (1984, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

One of the seminal songs of the 1980s, The Killing Moon‘s biggest fan might just be the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch.  In an interview with Uncut magazine, McCulloch said, “You don’t need to read The Bible, you can listen to ‘The Killing Moon‘ and get as much out of it. It’s the greatest song ever written.”

I would not go as far as to compare it to the Bible but this is a song and a video that epitomizes an era.  The atmospheric video, which mixes snow, abandoned roomed, mysterious figures, and flickering lights, is a riddle wrapped in an enigma and seems to be meant to viewed in October.

Years after it was released, The Killing Moon was discovered by a new generation of listeners when Richard Kelly used it in the opening scene of Donnie Darko.  As guitarist Will Sergeant explained it to The Guardian, “Years after it was a hit, we got an email saying this bloke wanted to use the song in a film, Donnie Darko, which we didn’t think would go anywhere, so accepted a one-off £3,000. Then when the director did the director’s cut he replaced ‘The Killing Moon’ with ‘Never Tear Us Apart‘ by INXS. Aren’t some people knobheads?”