Venom (2018) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written October 6th, 2018*

After the piss-poor marketing and universally negative reviews, I expected the worst from Venom. It had been described as this years "Fan4stic" and "Catwoman". After watching it, that is an absolutely absurd notion. It does very little to break new ground, but for the most part, it's a perfectly acceptable and watchable ride. I 100% guarantee if the exact same film had been made, but under the MCU logo, it would have got an easy free pass from critics. This is far better than half the Spider-Man films and a lot of MCU entries. 

We hit a lot of ground covered by several other films. Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock gets a new set of powers, has to deal with that, embraces it and then takes on a bad guy with the exact same powers. It's cookie cutter stuff, but it's done in such a competent manner, that's largely entertaining for the most part. 

By far the most interesting stuff going on here is Eddie dealing with Venom himself, who is an actual character within him. Venom really comes alive when it's just Eddie dealing with the sarcastic symbiote inside him. Some of the exchanges between the two are genuinely funny and something I've not seen done much before in comic-book films. We got hints of that with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, but devoting a whole film to a character's split personality works far better.

It's just a shame it takes so long to get there. I appreciate them taking the time to build up Eddie Brock as a character while we see him lose his job and fiancee (A thankless Michelle Williams), but they really should have fast-tracked this, as it takes a good 50 minutes or so to get going, or at the very least dedicated more time to Eddie being an actual journalist. None of this stuff is exceptionally terrible, but it is a bit of a slog. Once the action gets going in the second half, things are much more exciting.

I'm still trying to put my finger on Tom Hardy's performance. I'd seen people compare it to Jim Carey, which is just utter bollocks. There is definitely some comedic elements to his performance, particularly some slap-stick stuff towards the middle, but it's nowhere near as abrasive as people have made it out to be. Some of the absurd humour is when Venom actually feels like it has a voice of its own, it's very different to the lame cringe humour of the MCU films and works much better.

Where Venom doesn't work is easily with some of its action scenes and its villain. Riz Ahmed is a fantastic actor, so it was a shame to see him reduced to another cookie-cutter and disposable Marvel villain, he was so unbelievably bland and uninspired. A power hungry billionaire who eventually gets infected with a symbiote and has to go head to head with Venom. There is no time dedicated to actually making this character feel human, he's evil from the opening scene and never gets to do anything of note. Comic-book films have come a long way from 10 years ago in terms of villains, so it's annoying to see them backtracking at this point.

Part of what people seem to love about Venom is the fact he's an anti-hero. This was a big part of the marketing. Which turned out to be a huge lie, he's another superhero, but he has homicidal tendencies as he needs to consume living flesh to survive. We see him eat a couple of people, but never anyone good, it never goes far enough with the "Anti-hero" vibe it so wants. 

While the action is completely serviceable (The motorbike chase is the only standout I can think of) it is completely butchered by editing. Things come to a climax in one of the most spectacularly bland finales I've seen from a superhero film in a while. We get two characters with the same powers come head to head in a fight that I can only describe as "Two blobs of CGI ink smashing against each other". In terms of CGI, it all looks very good, I sorta love the design of Venom and there's no absolutely awful special effects that stood out. Good job.


This was also clearly shot with an adult rating, but they got cold feet at the last minute and cut it down. It's hugely noticeable. People are eaten and dismembered to bloodless results, it sticks out like a sore thumb and I'd really like to see an uncut version for home video release. I have to slam the BBFC for rating this a 15 too, aside from some mild moments of body horror, this is a 12A through and through, there is nothing about this to earn its adult rating in the UK. It's embarrassing that it was even considered for this rating.


Venom is not the disaster you expected, nor the great definitive film of the Spider-Man villain you wanted either, it's somewhere in the middle, joining the long list of Marvel films that are perfectly watchable entertainment. There is definitely room for improvement and I'd love to see the cut with "40 minutes of Brock and Venom" footage cut from the film, but for now, it is utterly fine.

6/10 Dans

Venom is out now in cinemas in the UK and a 4K UHD steelbook is available to pre-order from HMV

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The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - 4K Review

Review:

*Originally written September 12th, 2018*

I've tried, I've really tried. I want to love The Dark Knight Rises so much, I've given it so many chances, but it never improves, the flaws become more apparent and it seems to get worse with every watch. That said, this isn't the worst watch of it I've ever had, possible due to a 4K bump. As gorgeous as the 4K disc is, that means nothing for a film that is a complete write off on nearly every front.

I'm probably going to pick out a lot of things that have been brought up over the years with this. I'll get the good out the way first. It looks gorgeous, this is still a cinematic and beautiful film with one of Hans Zimmer's strongest scores. Nolan's flair for set-pieces and action is nearly unmatched. I nearly thought I was on board with this watch after the thrilling plane sequence, but it quickly falls apart.

Where DKR falls apart 90% of the time is in its screenplay. Nothing makes sense. Rather than feeling like a compelling and powerful ending to the Dark Knight Trilogy, what we have is an overlong mess of a film. I used to find this at the very least entertaining to watch, but in all honesty, it's just really boring and irritating. 

Nolan has had scripting issues in his films before, but they're usually during smaller or background scenes that don't really matter and can be overlooked. Here, it's front and display through the entire run-time. It is insane how this first draft feeling screenplay managed to get greenlit. Characters you've seen grow through two films are completely wasted and go against everything you'd seen from them so far. Alfred leaving Bruce because he feels Bane is unlike anything he's come up against is just so strange and makes no sense. 

The film makes a big deal about Tom Hardy's Bane being removed from The League of Shadows because his methods were "Too extreme", in this we're given no real indication of what that could be. Instead it's just a boring nuke the city and the good guys have to disarm it at the 11th hour. It's a very uninspired bad guy plan that could have least had some emotional weight to it, but just failed to make me care. They nearly manage to squeeze an emotional moment out from you, but due to extremely manipulative and lazy editing, that potentially meaningful moment is pulled from under us for a lame, eye rolling reveal at the end.

We're also introduced to a whole new series of characters that are all so under-baked and wasted. All the performances are fine, it's just the script that screws them over. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Blake is just the worst, a muddled character with a confusing arc. He finds out who Batman is due his smile when Bruce Wayne visited his orphanage as a kid, it made no sense. Then we have him shoot two criminals, in a blatant exercise of self-defence, throws his gun away in disgust (Obviously to mirror Batman's no guns policy), but then just picks up a gun anyway... It made no sense. And for some reason his superiors constantly refer to him as "Hot head" for no other reason than doing the basics of his job. 

Tom Hardy's Bane should have been a hulking force of nature, and he has his moments. The scene where he "Breaks the Bat" is genuinely brutal and exciting, displaying how powerful he is. It's a problem that has been mocked and made fun of for years, but it's true, His voice is a completely misguided idea. It really helps to watch DKR with subtitles, because a lot of the time, it's near impossible to understand what he says. It's also a shame where they go with his character by the end, reducing him to some lovesick henchman and giving him a completely unsatisfying and rushed death scene.

Since Bane is reduced to a henchman for Marion Cottilard's Talia al Ghul, things get even messier. Cottilard is a fine actress, so it's so strange and bizarre that she's completely wasted and given one of the most mocked and atrocious death scenes ever committed to film. Her role is so blatantly telegraphed through the film, making her villain reveal utterly meaningless and ineffective. 

Anne Hathaway's Catwoman is a also meant to be a sorta minor villain who changes her ways to be with Bruce at the end. While all the other performances range from fine to good, Hathaway sticks out like a sore thumb, trying so desperately hard to come off as sexy and snarky, that it just feels utterly cringe. She's just another character who's arc makes no sense at all. She's a career thief who only cares about herself, but changes her mind towards the end for no real reason. Oh, and there's a whole subplot about her after a device that wipes someones entire criminal record and every trace of them off the internet. 

I haven't even got to Bruce Wayne or Batman yet. 8 years after The Dark Knight, he's a reclusive cripple who hasn't been Batman since killing Harvey Dent and is still suffering from the injury he sustained from that. He's walks with a cane due to the fact he has no cartilage in his knee, then he gets some robot leg thing that completely fixes that. Oh, okay. He's called back into action due to Bane's exploits and constantly talks about how he hasn't given everything for Gotham yet. So it would have made sense for him to die. He goes through Hell in this film. His back is broken and he's taken to a prison in the middle of nowhere where his back is fixed after a couple of months and a punch in the back. Then he's able to be Batman again. No, really. That happens. It's such a muddled mess.


There was just so much potential here that's utterly wasted, it has the feel and scale of a Christopher Nolan film, but it just crushed and the immense weight of its truly awful screenplay. I continue to be confused at the people who 5 star this complete mess. Did they see a different film? Or am I just wrong? I've tried for years to like this film, and while I wish I could even enjoy this on a surface level, I can't even do that, I just feel disappointed and the insane potential that could have made a satisfying end to the trilogy. Still my biggest disappointment of all time.

4/10 Dans

The Dark Knight Rises is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written May 15th, 2015*

Some background with me and the Mad Max films: I had never previously seen a Mad Max film before December last year, I picked up the Blu-ray box-set and cracked on the first one. I was vastly disappointed, it was an ugly, incoherent mess of a film. The car chases and action were excellent for its day, especially taking into account the shoe-string budget, but the story was muddled and disjointed to the point where we had to check Wikipedia to see what had happened.

Thankfully Road Warrior was a vast improvement, with a story that you could actually follow and action scenes that were some of the best for its time, It still had it's problems but it was very watchable. It kinda felt like Evil Dead, the first was messy, but the sequel allowed the director to create the vision he wanted with a bigger budget. Now the last entry, Beyond Thunderdome was another mess, but it had its moments, it starts of all well, but eventually went to this strange family-friendly place that felt like Spielberg meets Lord of the Flies, which created a weird film that was tonally disjointed from the previous two.

Now after 30 years, Mad Max is back with Tom Hardy in Mel Gibson's seat as the titular anti-hero and the results are the birth of one of the best action films made in the past decade or so.
While not a reboot or remake of the first, Fury Road is a hybrid of a sequel and reboot, the past events of the last 3 films are all canon, but it feels like a completely new story and you really don't need to watch the first 3 to understand.

Fury Road places a reluctant Mad Max helping Furiosa (Charlize Theron) get Immortan Joe's (Hugh Keays-Byrne) sex slaves away from him and to the safety of the 'Green Land'. This is essentially the whole story that's told over a 2-hour chase scene.

It works perfectly. The action scenes are some of the most perfect I've ever seen on film. Apart from some weather effects (Which does look incredible) there is an outstanding reliance on practical effects and a very minimum and restrained use of CGI. I was amazed at how they filmed a lot of this, there are cars and trucks being totaled and blown up with the actors clearly in a close proximity. This film is true film-making at its finest.

The action scenes are accompanied by an excellent score which was composed by 'XL Junkie' (Yep). The music works its way into the film through a guy playing a guitar that's part flamethrower on top of one of the vehicles. Fury Road is filled with demented genius like this, the character and set designs are all excellent. The idea of having Mad Max as a human blood-bag for Nicholas Hoult for the first 40 minutes or so of the film was a risky idea that payed off.

Surprisingly, for a film called 'Mad Max' the lead character does not say much and spends a third of the film tied to a car with a muzzle attached to him. Which works fine, as Charlize Theron's character was great to watch, an amputee with a robot hand steals the show more than Tom Hardy, that's an achievement right there.


Perfectly paced, easy to follow and featuring some of the best action ever put on screen, Mad Max: Fury Road is a strange masterpiece in creative film-making that is so unique and different from anything that is released these days, that it has to be seen. 

10/10 Dans

Mad Max: Fury Road is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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The Revenant (2015) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written January 15th, 2016*

"Back from the Dead"

Alejandro G. Iñárritu (That's a name I won't be typing again) won the Oscar for last years wonderful Birdman. So expectations were high for the next vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio allusive Oscar. I'm pretty pleased to say that The Revenant is a brutal, bleak and unflinching masterpiece.

DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman on a expedition who is left for dead by his crew after a bear attack leaves him in a near death state, his son is also killed by Tom Hardy's Fitzgerald so he goes on a quest for revenge through the hard wilderness once he gets his strength back. 

It was a remarkable film. You feel every moment of DiCaprio's pain from the get go. His performance is truly committed, I don't know what the hell else he needs to do to win an Oscar after this. Honestly, he might need to die on camera for a posthumous award if he doesn't get it this year. I like to think of DiCaprio's journey of revenge in this as a metaphor for his ambitions of that Oscar, just going through so much, only to get knocked down, again and again. 

Even with his Oscar nomination for this, I don't feel a lot is being said about Tom Hardy's performance as the villain of the piece. He was fantastic. Even though he's the bad guy, his motivations still make sense, so it made for a complex villain that there is not a lot of today. 

Much like Birdman, I was left a little cold by the some of the more symbolic aspects of The Revenant. There was quite a few trippy dream sequences that come out of nowhere and honestly did not feel needed. They just come off as a bit pretentious. I'm sure there was a deep meaning behind a lot of it, but I didn't get it.

I did appreciate how straight forward the story was, despite the odd abstract moment. I did feel the 160 minute run-time a couple times throughout, this could of easily been trimmed a bit. This film is draining, you feel every minute of DiCaprio's journey. That said, every minute of the film absolutely gorgeous and there was so much craft and excellent film making was put into this. The opening shot was stunning and looked like one long shot. Every moment of cinematography was beautiful, even after just seeing a film set in the same time in the snowy frontier with The Hateful Eight, every shot looked fresh and unique here. Props to the sound and production design too, they may as well filmed this in the 1820's. Everything looked and sounded perfect.

The bear scene was something of a technical achievement to say the least. It had to be done with CGI for obvious reasons, but that took nothing away from such a thrilling and amazing sequence. Seriously, probably the most intense scene we're gonna get from a film all year. Every action scene struck and left me in awe, from the opening battle to the brutal and vicious showdown between DiCaprio and Hardy, it was all top notch. There was no compromise with the violence on display here either, everything felt real and raw, nothing felt fake or Hollywood. 

Loved the man vs man/man vs nature aspect of the film too. There was a lot of pure survival stuff which I adored during the journey and then it all wraps up powerfully with a touching and emotional end. There was a bit of ambiguity of the ending, but that didn't bother me at all. I will urge you not to look up anything about Hugh Glass before seeing The Revenant though. Oh, yeah, this was all based on a true story and this was surprisingly true to the actual events, which only made me love it more.


The Revenant might be a little long, but it's a bleak, intense, perfectly shot, uncompromisingly brutal and beautiful film that packs an emotional punch and features a truly powerhouse performance from DiCaprio that more than deserves his fabled Oscar.

9/10 Dans

The Revenant is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
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