SYNOPSIS: In “Venom: The Last Dance,” the final instalment of the “Venom” franchise, and now playing in theatres, Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, former investigative journalist whose body plays host to extraterrestrial symbiote Venom, whose presence imbues him with super-human abilities. Imagine an anti-superhero Jekyll and Hyde situation where Ed and Venom are a hybrid, two beings in one body, and you get the idea. Pursued by soldier Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) and powerful alien supervillain Knull (Andy Serkis), the dynamic duo are on the run to save themselves and the world. “Eddie,” says Venom, “I’m with you to the end.”
CAST: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Peggy Lu, Alanna Ubach, Andy Serkis and Stephen Graham. Written and directed by Kelly Marcel.
REVIEW: More an interspecies bromance comedy than end of the world movie, “Venom: The Last Dance” is a frat party of a film, complete with swearing, booze, dancing and a disregard for the rules (in this case, the rules of storytelling).
Episodic in nature, the story ping pongs between the misadventures of Eddie/Venom, the military alien warehouse Area 51, the Paris Casino in Las Vegas and the back of a Volkswagen Westfalia Camper.
The disparate puzzle pieces fit together to form a fast paced, if disjointed, whole, but most often, the movie feels like it’s biding its time, waiting for the climactic battle scene, which, when it comes, takes up about a third of the film’s runtime with frenetic, often hard-to-follow alien-on-alien action.
For instance, the Volkswagen dwelling alien hunters, led by the ever-reliable Rhys Ifans, add little, except for a few minutes on to the film’s scant runtime. Ifans and family sing a song, but their musical contribution pales compared to their real purpose—to be victims in need of rescue in the film’s final moments.
The star of the show is the interplay between Eddie and Venom. It’s a smart-alecky double act, with Hardy playing Eddie as a bit of a bubblehead, and Venom as the reckless, sharp-tongued alien. It’s Abbott and Costello, housed in one body, with an extra-terrestrial twist.
The first two films in the franchise—“Venom” (2018) and “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (2021)—often felt unintentionally funny. The new movie embraces the absurdity of the character(s) and, as a result, Eddie/Venom’s odd-couple bickering is the film’s highlight.
What it is not, is emotional. Their bond is played for laughs, up to, and including, a montage of their happiest moments together set to Maroon 5’s syrupy tune “Memories.” Don’t expect a poignancy or to shed a tear. There’s nothing wistful about the final outing between Eddie and Venom. It’s all fun and games until it isn’t.
“Venom: The Last Dance” is an action-packed time waster that zips through the story in just ninety minutes (plus an endless credit roll and two lame post credit scenes) to wrap up the current iteration of the character, while opening the door for future sequels.
LOGLINE: In this absurdist comedy, three adult children (Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans and Lara Flynn Boyle) must figure out why their mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, refuses to leave a green couch on the second floor of a rundown furniture store. With the help of the store managers (Taylor Russell and F. Murray Abraham) the siblings go on a voyage of self-discovery as they work on getting their couch potato mother out of the store.
CAST: Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell, Lara Flynn Boyle, Lake Bell, F. Murray Abraham, Ellen Burstyn. Written and directed by Niclas Larsson.
REVIEW: A mystery with no real solution, “Mother, Couch” is a family drama that examines themes of parenting and toxic relationships through a dreamlike lens. It offers loads of existential atmosphere, but no easy answers. Writer/director Niclas Larsson, adapting the novel “Mamma i sofa” by Jerker Virdborg, presents a strange mix of surrealism and sentimentality that never quite gels.
It’s a shame because the actor’s ensemble, led by McGregor, hand in solid, earthbound performances that keep this flight of fancy from spinning completely out of control. Standouts include McGregor, who plays the genuine befuddlement of the situation, allowing his long-suppressed emotions to overflow as things grow weirder and weirder, and Boyle, whose bitterness hangs over the situation like a shroud.
Drenched in metaphor and allegory, the dark comedy “Mother, Couch” breathes the same air as Charlie Kaufman and Ari Aster, but Larsson allows the metaphysical aspects of the movie to overwhelm the story’s true emotion.
There’s stubborn, and then there’s Diana Nyad, the subject of “NYAD,” a new Netflix movie starring Annette Bening as a marathon swimmer who doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit. Battling against age, weather and expectations, she refuses to give up on her dream of swimming the 108 miles (174 km) from Cuba to Key West through shark and jellyfish infested waters. “I will not accept defeat,” she says.
Based on Nyad’s true story, the movie begins on the eve of her 60th birthday. Thirty years after trading her swimming career for a gig as a correspondent for “Wide World of Sports,” she wants another challenge. “You turn sixty and the world decides you’re a bag of bones,” she says.
Sidestepping the self-described “hurtling toward mediocrity,” she sets her sights on revisiting her failed 1978 long distance swim between Cuba to Key West. At age 29 she swam for 42 hours, covered 76 miles (122 km), but was forced to abort because of weather.
At the time experts said the swim was “closer to impossible than possible.” Now, with a ragtag team of volunteers, including her best friend/coach/support system Bonnie (Jodie Foster) and navigator John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans), she sets off to conquer the “Mount Everest” of swims, no matter how many tries it takes. “I don’t leave room for imaging defeat,” she declares.
“NYAD” is not exactly a biopic. It focusses on a specific time in Nyad’s life, filling in background details with hallucinatory flashbacks, so it never goes deep. Instead, it succeeds because it is a portrait of the determination required to become a world class athlete and the team that helps along the way.
It’s also the story of platonic love as it examines the friendship between Nyad and Bonnie. Bening and Foster, both terrific, provide the movie’s heart, providing an emotional element that elevates the film’s prevailing, and occasionally overwrought, inspirational message. The third spoke on the wheel is Ifans as the gruff-navigator-with-a-heart-of-gold. His analytical, logical approach provides a nice counterpart to Bonnie’s tough love and Diana’s self-absorption.
The swimming scenes, and there are many of them, are nicely captured by “Top Gun: Maverick” cinematographer Claudio Miranda, whose camera gives the audience a you-are-there look at Diana in action. The vastness of the ocean, the ever-present danger of sharks and venomous Box Jellyfish coupled with Miranda’s photography amplify the overwhelming odds Nyad is up against.
“NYAD” spends much of its runtime in the water, following Diana as she makes attempt after attempt to achieve her goal, but it isn’t the sport that makes the movie interesting. Like any great sports movie, it’s the people, not the game that is most compelling.
“Life is not an oyster,” says Maurice Flitcroft in “The Phantom of the Open,” a new feel-good film starring Mark Rylance and now playing in theatres. “It’s a barnacle.” It’s a rare moment of despair for the endlessly optimist man who followed his passions, in an unlikely journey to becoming a British folk hero.
Flitcroft, a 46-year-old crane operator I the same shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, England, where his father and grandfather worked, but after dabbling in painting, music and even stunt driving, he adopted the Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” as his mantra.
He encourages his wife Jean (Sally Hawkins), his stepson Michael (Jake Davies) and twins Gene and James (Christian and Jonah Lees) to go for it and live their dreams.
In 1976, facing unemployment, Flitcroft takes up golf with an eye toward playing in the oldest golf tournament in the world, the British Open. He’s never played before, but has determination, heart and a belief, “an open championship should be open to everyone.”
Unbelievably (although this is a true story) he qualifies and in the qualifying round scores a catastrophic 121, 49 over par, a record for worst score that has yet to be broken. British Open organizer Keith Mackenzie (Rhys Ifans) is outraged—”I want him banned from every club in the country!”— but the press love the plucky golfer’s underdog story and the public, both at home and abroad, embrace him as an inspiration. “Practice is the road to perfection,” he says.
“The Phantom of the Open” is as sweet as Flitcroft’s tea. He takes six sugars in every cuppa, and that sugar rush keeps him and the movie moving forward.
Falling in line with Brit, true-to-lie-feel-good movies like “Fisherman’s Friends,” “Eddie the Eagle” and “Calendar Girls,” or jovial television shows like “Ted Lasso,” this one is kept aloft by masterfully amiable performances from the cast led by Rylance and Hawkins.
Rylance practically beams light as the upbeat dreamer. What could have been a caricature of a whimsical fantasist is tempered by the actor’s considerable comedic skill as well as his ability to find the core of humanity in every character he plays. It would have been easy to play Flitcroft as a broad character with a head full of dreams and nothing more, but Rylance sees to it that we see the person not the farce.
“The Phantom of the Open” is kind of old fashioned, but contains solid laughs and dives deep to reveal the class prejudices the crane operator suffered as he pursued bis dream. Most importantly, it is about the importance of following your heart, no matter where it takes you, to find happiness.
In the movies The Kingsmen are a secret spy organization whose members have manners that would make Henry Higgins proud and gadgets that James Bond would envy. They’ve been the subject of two movies, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” and “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” and now, three movies into director Matthew Vaughn’s spy franchise comes an origin story that takes us back to the early part of the 20th century and the confusing beginnings of these modern-day knights.
“The King’s Man,” now playing in theatres, begins with a tragedy that makes the wealthy and powerful Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) reject the Colonialism and violence that is the bedrock of his family’s fortune. He questions why he was killing people who were trying to protect their own land. “With every man I killed,” he said, “I killed a piece of myself.”
Meanwhile, as World War I approaches, an assembly of the world’s most despicable tyrants and villains, working for an evil mastermind with plans for world domination, are hatching a plan that could lead to genocide.
With the lives of millions at stake, and his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) off to war, the Duke realizes he can’t rely on politicians to do the right thing. In an effort to save the world, he abandons his pacifist ways. With the help of his most trusted colleagues, swordsman Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and sharp shooter Polly (Gemma Arterton), he goes into the fray and sews the seeds for the formation of The Kingsmen, an organization that uses violence to attain peace.
The first two Kingsmen movies were overstuffed, but had a certain lightness of touch. Unfortunately, “The King’s Man” lands with a thud. A mix of fact (well, almost true stuff) and fiction—real life characters like Rasputin, the mad Russian monk (Rhys Ifans) are woven into the fanciful story—the movie is all over the place. It’s a spy story, a tale of duty, a slapstick comedy, an action film, a fractured fairy tale of world events.
Some of the action scenes are quite fun and Ifans eats so much scenery it feels like he’ll never go hungry again, but the story takes far too long to get going.
“The King’s Man” feels as though it is splintering off in all directions, like it’s three movies spliced-and-diced into one, bloated, messy sequel-ready story.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Angie Seth to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the latest from your friendly neighbourhood crimefighter in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the dark carnival of “Nightmare Alley” and the ex-porn star drama “Red Rocket.”
At the beginning of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the new two-and-a-half-hour-long superhero movie now playing in theatres, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) learns it’s hard to be a masked crime fighter when everybody knows who you are under your red and black suit.
Exposed by supervillain Mysterio at the end of “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” Parker’s life has been turned upside down. And not in a fun way as in 2002’s “Spider-Man” when Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst shared an upside-down smooch in the rain.
That was harmless good fun.
These days, the friendly neighborhood web-slinger’s newfound notoriety makes it impossible for him to balance his personal life and relationships with girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), best pal Ned (Jacob Batalon) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) with his role as a world saving crime fighter.
“People looked up to this boy and called him a hero,” squawks J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons), the conspiratorial host of TheDailyBugle.net. “Well, I’ll tell you what I call him, Public Enemy Number One!”
Some think he’s a hero, others regard him as a vigilante. As his identities become blurred, Parker turns to becaped neurosurgeon and Master of the Mystic Arts, Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), for help.
“When Mysterio revealed my identity, my entire life got screwed up,” Parker says to Strange. “I was wondering if you could make it so it never did.”
Parker wants Dr. Strange to conjure up a spell to brainwash the world and make people forget he is Spider-Man.
It’s a big ask. “Be careful what you wish for,” Strange says, warning Parker that casting such a spell will tamper with the stability of space and time.
Sure enough, the spell blows a hole in the multiverse, the collection of parallel universes with alternate realities, and unleashes “universal trespassers,” the most terrifying foes Spider-Man has ever faced in this or any other realm.
There’s more. Lots more. Big emotional moments, lotsa jokes, nostalgia and fan service, an orgy of CGI and Villains! Villains! Villains! The multiverse offers up a multitude of surprises but there will be no spoilers here. Your eyeballs will dance and, depending on your level of fandom, maybe even well up from time to time.
The trippiness of the story’s inter dimensional leaps, while entertaining, are secondary to the movie’s strongest feature, Spider-Man’s empathy. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a movie about second chances. Peter Parker doesn’t want to simply vanquish his enemies, he wants to understand them, to know why they behave as they do. By the time the end credits roll, the baddies may not be able to wreak havoc anymore, but not for the reasons you might imagine.
In real life the world is divided by ideology and opinion. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” asks us to examine those differences, look for their roots and try and heal them. It does so with plenty of trademarked Marvel action and overstuffed bombast, but the core message of empathy and understanding for others is the engine that keeps the movie chugging forward.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a mix of exhilaration and exhaustion. It is inconsistent in its storytelling, overblown at times and the finale is a drawn-out CGI fest but when it focusses on the characters, empathy and the chemistry between the actors, it soars, like Spider-Man slinging webs and effortlessly zooming between skyscrapers.
Fifty years after the 1970 Miss World pageant erupted into chaos a new film documents the events that sent host Bob Hope scurrying from the stage, bombarded by flour bombs and heckles. “Misbehaviour,” a new British film starring Keira Knightley and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and now on VOD, sees members of the nascent British women’s liberation movement rebel against the show’s objectification of its contestants and Hope’s terrible jokes. “I consider the feelings of women,” he says, “I consider feeling women all the time.”
Knightley is Sally Alexander, a single mother and academic who believes the women’s liberation movement must address systemic sexism if there is to be meaningful change. Jo Robinson (Jessie Buckley) takes a more hands-on approach, defacing statues and sexist billboards. Despite differing approaches, they focus their efforts on the Miss World pageant, an annual event with a world-wide television audience of over 100 million people.
In a parallel story Gugu Mbatha-Raw is Jennifer Hosten, Grenada’s first competitor in Miss World. Intelligent, elegant and composed, she’s willing to endure the contest’s objectification for the chance to make history as the first woman of colour to win the pageant crown. “You are a very lucky person if you think this is being treated badly,” she tells Miss Sweden, Maj Johansson (Clara Rosager).
“Misbehaviour” is an ambitious movie disguised as a feel good Britcom. Issues are raised and the era is vividly portrayed trough fashion and the attitude of the pageant’s organizers, but the story’s main point, that feminism comes in many styles and can mean different things to different people, is broached in a superficially earnest way, but never explored. Alexander and Robinson see the absurdity of the beauty contest is liken to a “cattle market.” The farcicality of it all, the bathing suit competition, the numbers on the wrists, is not lost on Hosten but for her it is an opportunity to make a statement to other woman and girls who look like her that this, and anything else in life, is possible. That doors can be opened.
Knightley and Buckley are reliably good but it is Mbatha-Raw who brings the heart and soul to “Misbehaviour.” More than just a retelling of the flour-bombing of Bob Hope or a history lesson on the roots of the women’s liberation movement (at the end we actually meet the real-life counterparts of the film’s characters), it’s character study of Hosten. She may not be the focus of the story, that’s Alexander and Robinson, but Mbatha-Raw’s warmth tempered by inner unease makes her the movie’s most layered and interesting character.
If there ever was a story tailor made for Oliver Stone’s sensibilities, “Snowden” is it. Polarizing in the extreme, Ed Snowden, an American computer wiz who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian, was called a traitor by Donald Trump and a hero by the New Yorker. Two hours into this biopic it’s not hard to see which side of the fence Stone falls on.
It’s 2003 when we first meet future whistleblower Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) he’s a grunt in the US Army struggling through basic training. The deeply patriotic high-school dropout wants to serve his country but his body doesn’t cooperate. Honourably discharged for medical reasons he turns to the CIA, hoping to find meaningful work as a computer specialist and because, “it sounds really cool to have a top security clearance.”
Hired on, he learns the tools of today’s warfare. “The modern battlefield is everywhere,” he’s told while designing and building computer systems he believes will keep his country safe. Meanwhile the secretive nature of his work is slowly driving a wedge between he and girlfriend Lindsay (Shailene Woodley), a liberal leaning photographer who doesn’t always support Ed’s views but always supports him.
Over the next decade his efforts to prevent terrorists and cyber attacks leads him down a rabbit hole of intrigue and double-dealings. Partially responsible for running a dragnet on the whole world he helps gather information—using cell phone and computer cameras—on regular everyday citizens as well as the baddies and begins to question his mandate. The NSA, he says is tracking the cell phones of everyone. “Not just terrorists or countries,” he says, “but us.”
In June 2013 he decides to go public by leaking classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian. “I just want to get the data to the media so people can decide whether I’m wrong,” he says, “or if the government is wrong.”
A title card at the beginning of “Snowden” reads, “The following is a dramatization of events that occurred between 2004 and 2013.” That gives director Stone ample leeway to tell the story his way. In other words, this ain’t a documentary. It is clear he is on Snowden’s side, that he doesn’t see him as a traitor or snitch but a hero. His thesis seems to be that you don’t have to agree with your politicians to be a patriot. Stone supports his view visually—Snowden literally comes out of the darkness and into the light when he leaves the NSA building for the last time—and through the actions and words of several of his characters. Rhys Ifans plays a CIA trainer/master manipulator who feeds Snowden’s naïve patriotism with defence mantras. “Most Americans don’t want freedom,” he preaches, “they want security.” Later Snowden’s NSA supervisor Trevor (Scott Eastwood) argues that a job like the one Snowden is doing, can’t be criminal “if you’re working for the government.”
But hey, this isn’t CNN or Fox News, it’s a big screen entertainment and on that score it works. Gordon-Levitt transforms into a monotone über nerd, equal parts sweetness and paranoia. What he lacks in warmth Woodley more than makes up for, handing in a performance that is all emotion and concern.
When Ifans leaves a video conference call with the sign off, “I’ll see you soon,” those simple words take on a sinister feel when it is clear that he really can see you, whether you know it or not. Stone may not be able to shape the way you feel about Ed Snowden, but if nothing else he’ll make you want to cover the camera on your computer.
SYNOPSIS: In “Venom: The Last Dance,” the final instalment of the “Venom” franchise, and now playing in theatres, Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, former investigative journalist whose body plays host to extraterrestrial symbiote Venom, whose presence imbues him with super-human abilities. Imagine an anti-superhero Jekyll and Hyde situation where Ed and Venom are a hybrid, two beings in one body, and you get the idea. Pursued by soldier Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), scientist Dr. Payne (Juno Temple) and powerful alien supervillain Knull (Andy Serkis), the dynamic duo are on the run to save themselves and the world. “Eddie,” says Venom, “I’m with you to the end.”
