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Cinema Briefing
Movie reviews by
Ian Flanagan
Ian Flanagan
 1 ½ (out of 4)
I can’t really say ENCORE when I wouldn’t even bother to stay for some severely superfluous post-credits moments put there to undo any sense of a sendoff this Last Gasp feigns commitment to. At least it wasn’t a fucking jukebox musical, and from that title it very well could’ve been. No, the third Venom is hardly anything at all — Andy Serkis’ Let There Be Carnage felt incomplete and underwhelming (just as it proved we were out of the worst of COVID times with its impressive haul in early fall 2021) but I’m already longing for that far less testing trifle, as at least the first sequel to 2018's Venom kept the B-movie charms in check and was ruthlessly cut. Even with silly symbiote horsepower, personally my goodwill is too used up to call this a pleasing parting in a run of anti-heroics that never had critics on its side but always the audiences — with consistent budgets of only just over 100 million, for putting up the lowest numbers of the trilogy the profits of The Last Dance still could have easily secured a needless future for Sony’s only non-Spidey attribute, regardless of Morb- or Madame-sized flops. Frankly this was worse than Morbius, which is insane given how likable the Eddie-Venom bond remains in their least lovable showing. Tom Hardy looks bloated, unhealthy and as Brock he’s just getting that paycheck but secretly voicing Venom in addition this whole time is mighty admirable. Michelle Williams, understandably, wouldn’t touch this franchise with a 10-foot pole at this point, I don’t believe there’s a single reference to her love interest, Eddie lost the girl in the origin story. Rhys Ivans as the hippie Dad scoping out aliens, Chiwetal Ejiofor playing generic hardheaded sergeant, an almost unrecognizable Juno Temple and her co-star Clark Backo as the caring scientists — at least no one became some last-minute hero or villain but the characterization is crazy bad, and it's not like the last one made you fall in love with Carnage and Shriek. Peggy Lu as the clerk Mrs. Chen from the first two movies maybe is the highlight returning character, how very sad. Anyway when this Last Dance drops the pretense of some grandiose bit of blockbuster science fiction, it only becomes acceptable putting the plot on the backburner for hippie family shenanigans and Las Vegas revelry. Cutting back to desert government facilities will take you right back to some bastardized 'big finale' like any other movie masked under resolution, about to bust out plenty of sequels coming off their Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare or The Final Destination or whatever fleeting finish can be immediately ignored if necessary. So if the throwaway leisure time is the good stuff, it make sense how slight each installment and now the whole pathetic trio has been — Venom is still funny and Hardy’s dynamic with his better half still makes up for so much of the man on the lamb nonsense this “movie” has to offer. Why not entirely ignore the tacky mid-credits tease in Let There Be Carnage that our pair had somehow landed in the MCU, since you just play it off here. The technical stuff probably shouldn't be so buried in this case, as this is one of the most poorly edited major movies I’ve seen in some time, not nearing Sony’s barrel bottom worst, Madame Web, but getting darn close. Freaking Kelly Marcel (who clearly met Hardy during her emergency rewrite of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson) has been writing and producing these movies the whole time, and otherwise has dipped her pen in schmaltz (Saving Mr. Banks sentimental, sanctimonious take on Walt Disney acquiring Mary Poppins), sultriness (Fifty Shades of Grey’s fundamentally not-so-freaky foolishness) and even a story credit for the long-winded, crudely indulgent Cruella (Emma Stone at her most unbecomingly exaggerated) before stepping into the director’s chair for the first time. Serkis and Ruben Fleischer might not have been hosts to so much more coherent, quality escapism, but they sure didn't offer regularly crumby, callous whiplash where the sum feels about as cacophonous as it is careless. This is low-rent moviemaking that still can’t handle its wide audience for mainstream, gutless, body-horror buddy-movie hijinks, and for its few full comedic moments it’s just not enough to offset wanting to be taken seriously enough while also refusing to outdo what little was memorable about the first two installments — although how could I not enjoy when a separated Venom hops from fish to frogs in a desperate running river chase to get back to Eddie. When you have to edit and write around your titular character's gruesome head-snacking for some edgy teenage dollars, you end up with movies that feel too screen-tested or not enough, where you can’t tell if shit was added or chopped or anything at all because it’s such a clusterfuck mess. With so many story inconsistencies and moments of excruciating expository excess it really becomes a challenge to settle into The Last Dance and not treat it all like a chore. God willing Kraven the Hunter isn’t perfectly putrid, which would make Sony three for three in 2024 comic book movie calamities — please just whip those animators into shape and complete the Spider-Verse trilogy so I can forget all this sinister sub-cinema.  2 ½ (out of 4)
Director Parker Finn has big plans for the SMILE UNIVERSE (spare me) but 2022’s Smile was nearly left to media purgatory, colloquially know as direct-to-streaming. Paramount switched the feature to a theatrical release last minute due to strong test scores AND YET, in spite of sizable turnout and enough word of mouth to ensure sequels, those darn cinemascores were low. How does the scariest mainstream horror flick, one of the most effective psychological / supernatural affairs in God knows how long, still leave the casuals unmoved? An ambitious follow-up was beyond question, box office aside anyone can tell you the chain curse premise is primed for installments and then some — Final Destination is currently getting a sixth this coming May, (almost 15 years since the last, at least the first two sequels were worth it), It Follows will become a pair once They Follow finally gets here, and both Sinister 2 and The (American) Ring have their plodding, inferior posteriors. These don't end well and never do, and ignoring that there’s seemingly no escape (perhaps the faintest chance of survival in this and It Follows, the primary victim of Parker's pastiche) Smile almost seems like it could go on forever. So instead of overlaying a formidable formula across as many movies until it gets old, Parker immediately high jumps from passing along paranormal predators to straight-up Freddy Krueger shit (Dream Warriors is also a much more illustrious influence). The parting seconds leaves me to assume a concert-crowd-sized plague of Smile-specter spectators is about to be unleashed for maybe the mass-suicidal flavors of The Happening’s B-movie extremism and hopefully some Body Snatchers-borrowed bananas paranoia in the third installment. As its own sequel Finn does a fine enough job, which is hard for me to say considering twists negating a decent chunk of the movie will always and forever drive me nuts. I can still mostly make out how the edges break between reality and this evil entity’s tricks, although for playing so many mind games it’s a shame this doesn’t make more sense — the original was clearly the more frightening, though Smile 2 masters a sort of sustained tension even when it’s all in your head, man. Of course sequels must go bigger, and the added oomph is justified as this invisible haunter might not be fucking with its victim in a variety of new ways like the stretch of Paranormal Activity flicks (pretty decent until the fourth one), since the glad ghoul itself admits it has been waiting for someone of influence, consequence or fame. The trauma-thirsty haunter yields more obvious themes as we swap an everywoman for the less preferred pop star played by Naomi Scott (the worst 1/3 of a terrible Charlie’s Angels reboot and an alright Jasmine in Guy Ritchie’s half-assed live-action Aladdin). Her character’s unverifiable psychosis is believed even less than Sosie Bacon’s therapist character due to a recovering addiction (the Smile spirit always felt like the devil on your shoulder à la some bad habit) but mostly for her coming off like a typically shallow prima donna. The film begins with a sharp simulated one-take that seals the fate of our ultimately afflicted cop friend (Perry Strong) from the first installment, a nice reversal on transferring the paranormal parasite via murder plus witness as we see in the hilarious imaginary scenario last time with Kal Penn. But other than the presumed taunt turning out to be a source of aid, there are not many special wrinkles — we slowly are fed a tragic backstory in which our lead woman unwittingly commited manslaughter, copy paste… The cheesin’ demon fucks with her while she loses her mind, goaded into burning bridges and escalating public humiliation, but the chills arrive with significantly less rapid elemental terror and even the comforting humor in between isn’t as reliable. Finn likes his distorted exterior shots and the score is more warped, unexpected minimalism, all stylistics articulations furthered from the first. Rewatching the original I noticed a foreign poster of Michael Ritchie’s 1968 debut Downhill Racer in the cop’s apartment — innocuous except that Ritchie’s third film after two Robert Redford projects, that skiing drama and a scathing political lampoon The Candidate, was 1975’s Smile, a semi-satire on teenage beauty pageants. Smile '75 has more in common with Smile 2 and all the confetti, glitter and parasocial problems that comes with pop stardom, but after going down a pre-Bad News Bears rabbit hole, Finn clearly just wanted to nod to a coincidental favorite more than indicate an actual influence. Smile 2 ultimately admits it can’t keep this shit up forever, and Parker swings for the fences as he forces us to cliffhang waiting on a third installment to see if the gonzo gear-shift panned out. Between Beetlejuice’s bummer of a late sequel and personally lacking the appetite for gore fetishism in the Terrifier franchise (and clearly Speak No Evil was going to be at best a tacky knockoff of the Danish original), it’s a sad time for the horror fan outside of The Substance’s stupendous synthesis. The Smile movies may boil down to It Follows for the less discerning, nonetheless this second take is a relatively robust set of freaky frightmares that tickled me even if it was unable to make my spine shiver as the familiar, nearly masterful first film solicited scene after scene. I was not laughing or singing praises with Joker 2 but Smile 2 had me grinning many a time, like when her backup dancers become a prowling ensemble straight from satan’s nightclub.  1 (out of 4)
“It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message.” Why not hold off assessing the billowing, flaming clusterfuck that is Folie à Deux and just discuss Todd Phillips — this guy is what liberals means when they say toxic masculinity, and that’s before you get to the depressed loner incel version of the Joker. Everything he does endorses the stink of man-child cinema without enough wit or anchoring comic talent to justify it, certainly not Ken Jeong or Zack Galifinakis... the latter couldn’t save his Planes, Trains and Automobiles for dummies Due Date, and the two together couldn't redeem much of the Hangover trilogy for that matter. That first 2009 hit was a zeitgeist-wrangling fluke just like Joker, and similarly both “franchises” now thrive via insults to the poor folks who gave a shit in the first place, all in the name of some kind of subversive, nasty nothingness, like The Last Jedi only more repugnant, somehow. He’s a crass, indulgent purveyor of lame male fantasies, his bread and butter still just a sadder shade of the Adam McKay, Judd Apatow and whoever was directing Seth Rogen’s stuff at the moment. At least they could actually make something memorable or regularly make you laugh. Road Trip and Old School are just paler National Lampoon knockoffs, School for Scoundrels isn’t far off… see his decently reviewed stuff is no different from most of his panned bunk — if Starsky and Hutch (transmuted 80s cliches lined with lazy improv) and War Dogs (like Lord of War, The Social Network and The Big Short had a collective miscarriage) can get a fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, oh boy I just don’t know how critics could be so easily swindled by a charlatan, a phony, a poor director — Joker, for me and many others, was accidentally good, carried like freaking Atlas by a gangled, giggly Joaquin Phoenix attaining peak method madness and earning him an overdue Academy Award. But there was no first prize at the Venice Film Festival this time, and there will be no Best Director nominations next year MR. PHILLIPS because (and I’m so curious if you know this yourself) but Folie à pee yew is a TURKEY, a really foul failure, a perfect exercise in second-hand embarrassment, cinematic detritus posturing as even more of an avant-garde affair than last time. Joker circa 2024 has a tripled budget seeing a fraction of the returns, so WB went from making at least 10x their investment to likely losing tens of millions at least, damn even the Hangover flicks were printing money through the third. This 140 minute massacre of your Monday matinee really does make you wonder if it was all a farce (no pun seriously), if Warner or Todd somehow insisted on dismantling the cult created by the first film with a feature length epilogue (one made up less of elaboration and more erasure) meant to metaphorically put the audience on trial right up there with Arthur Fleck. Lady Gaga has to stick her nose in things and in this putrid jukebox musical (I’d rather be watching Trolls, any of them) she’s somehow NOT doing most of the singing?? “And actuallyyy for art’s sake it’s best if your mouth is dry and you're off-key and, you know what fuck it who cares about tempo.” God save the editor of this epic junk as it bores the shit out of you in steadily unpleasant uncertainty, waiting for something to happen — when it does you wish it hadn’t, because it’s just more of the first film COMING FULL CIRCLE, oh I see the frat boy fancies himself a film festival frequenter now. You just want to tell Todd that, even though you may have enjoyed one of this film’s fantasy dream sequences for the decent song and a little violence and vindication (you know, like the first movie), YOU SUCK PHILLIPS. Your hackneyed effort, ironic or sincere, makes for such a mess that not even the greatest living actor on screen right now can do shit for you, so yeah no Best Picture nom this time, just humiliation to follow up your heyday. I don’t even know what to think — oh wow the psycho who murdered people he was murdered by a psycho SO POETIC. This film is somehow an airy, crunchy, cumbersome concoction of courtroom show, prison drama and musical theatre — was the Oscar winning composer of 2019 Joker Hildur Guonadottir, did she have a say in maybe not reciting "That’s Entertainment" five times? Sure, with those sick ARRI ALEXA IMAX cameras you can get a few decent shots since Phoenix + cigarettes + dancing is somehow all that apparently inspired this movie to begin with and you can’t argue with what you get. But the terrible Harvey Dent crowbarring, Arthur’s “I was gonna blame society but maybe I’M the one to blame” breakdown at the end, Gaga’s smugness and this interpretation of the character’s reversal on Harley Quinn typically getting used by the Clown Prince, the tasteless thematic dissection of mental illness (again) and a dimwit’s examination of duality — it’s such pugnacious, self-indulgent sophistry, somehow even more ridiculously edgy than where we left off. Why do the guards let him get a new suit after they beat him to a pulp, or let him cackle in the rain, or imply the prison rape, why? Why must this movie take you through every moment and character of the first movie? How little reason did Folie à Deux actually have to exist? The first film literally left you with “the end,” so the fact that Phoenix wanted to do something more "out there" is nice but this semi-gamble is simply asinine and alienating, especially as you drop projects with actual auteur’s like Todd Haynes days before production. Reboots aside, adjacent, outlier fans now solely have Matt Reeves' perpetually delayed Batman Part II to rest their hopes on. |
Forthcoming:
Thoughts on Snow White Black Bag Mickey 17 Captain America: Brave New World Flight Risk The Brutalist Nosferatu A Complete Unknown Sonic the Hedgehog 3 The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Wicked Gladiator II Emilia Pérez Here Anora Megalopolis The Substance Longlegs Hit Man Dune Part Two Poor Things ... Follow me on Twitter @ newwavebiscuit To keep it brief...
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October 2024
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