Category: now in theatres

Dub’s Take: Better Man (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2 out of 5

What creative doesn’t love a contract, which includes being a good rep by spending your daylight hours fielding endless interview questions from a bevy of international reporters?

Much like film criticism, there’s a finite number of queries before you end up answering the same ones over-and-over again. But you still have to act like you’re chuffed no one’s asked you that one before, just like singer/songwriter/“Better Man” subject Robbie Williams and director Michael Gracey. Any conversation about Better Man is eventually going to devolve into an opinion on whether the monkey thing actually works or not. And much like questions at a press gala, if you have to ask so many of them to get the answer you want, then maybe it wasn’t so interesting to begin with.

Gracey says in the pre-show, “Whatever kind of movie you think (Better Man) is going to be, it’s not that movie.” But it is, following the same Sisyphean tropes that other biopics of its vein already have. While I can respect Williams’ tenacity of spirit, he hasn’t lived through anything the public hasn’t already seen from the celebrity sphere before. If Williams is this in-your-face in Britain then it’s no wonder his movie is struggling at the box office: the public already knows more than it wants to from the covers of tabloid magazines.

Better Man’s resilience, then, relies on its music & aesthetics which, for the most part, are successful. Despite some lackadaisical CGI (Williams’ avatar isn’t as detailed as those in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”), the movie still looks good, including a solid visual metaphor for panic attacks. While I can’t see myself picking up the soundtrack album, the music was pretty good, too. If you go solely off the film’s cuts, you’d think Williams is a balladier like solo George Michael: these needle-drops work for the movie’s somber beats, but I longed for more up-tempo numbers like in the show-stopping Take That & Knebworth sequences.

At the film’s midway point, Robbie goes through a frosted-tip phase, but instead of solely colouring the monkey’s head hair blond, the filmmakers dye his face & neck hair, too. Does that mean his chest hair is blond as well? Where’s the walking on all-fours & clattering? Better Man gets points for trying something different, even if it’s a shallow template for another, more-bonkers film with superior follow-through.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Even if the film didn’t totally work, Williams & Gracey concocted some wild, “Across the Universe”-esque fantasy sequences, such as Williams & Raechelle Banno’s courting montage, when Williams is caught with heroin, or the left-field “Beowulf” climax. Would any of these scenes have played better with a human actor as opposed to a monkey? Should there have been more monkey-isms? Did the movie strike the right balance between monkey & man? Do you even care? Let us know in the comments below!

Posted on by wd 0

Dub’s Take: Kraven The Hunter (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

Remember in “Back to the Future”, when Marty is auditioning for the Battle of the Bands and Huey Lewis tells him he’s “too darn loud?” So quiet & subdued 80% of “Kraven The Hunter” was, that I could clearly hear the shakey leg of the phobic teenager sitting in the row behind me with their 10-person family entourage. They wanted to be anywhere else, too.

Let’s draw the same comparisons every other review is: between this & Chris Nolan’s “Batman Begins”. While their narrative direction differs, Batman’s opening salvo is tightly edited, dynamically paced, and Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack effectively ‘mickey-mouses’ every scene.

After Kraven’s prologue (freely-available to view on YouTube), there’s a twenty-minute passage with no music, no action, and non-stop dialogue. Aaron Taylor-Johnson eventually bites someone’s cheek off in a fountain of CGI gore, but it segues to another long section with tedious exposition, and Aaron’s incessant fourth-wall mugging.

Legacy director Quentin Tarantino says there are no more movie stars in modern Hollywood, and Aaron is a good thesis. He’s handsome, charismatic, and clearly committed to the role (physically-speaking), but the self-awareness of his line readings betrays the serious tone of the rest of the picture – particularly in Russell Crowe & Alessandro Nivola’s sobering villains. A dozen buffalo are graphically killed by poachers, but all Aaron has for them are poster quips.

Kraven betrays its audience in more overt ways than merely contemptuous acting & a lack of trust. Poor pacing may be covered-up in post-production, but bad timing is entirely a director’s fault, and J.C. Chandor (“A Most Violent Year”) has no clue how to stage action for the mainstream. At one point, a phase-shifting antagonist appears behind someone to shoot them, but when we cut to the reveal, it’s a full beat before the trigger is pulled. Why wait so long? Why is a ten-second throwaway bar shootout halfway through framed clearer than a climactic scene in a monastery? Why is a CGI cutaway of Aaron jumping out a thirty-floor window the most exciting single sequence?

Kraven’s two hours are only passingly engaging, no one looks like they’re having a good time except Aaron (and at the viewer’s expense), and Chandor is more concerned with pretentious drama than Christmas entertainment for the masses. I wanted to like it, but Kraven is lifeless, and not loud enough.

Movie poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you glad the Sony-verse of Spider-Man villain origin stories are over, for now? Do you think Aaron’s smugness will play better should he be hired as the next James Bond? Did you like Kraven’s CGI fuzz (including a tank of a lion, an inquisitive eagle, and a very hairy Russian bear) as much as my wife & I did? Leave your comments below, and Happy Holidays!

Posted on by wd 0

Dub’s Take: Gladiator II (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

4.5 out of 5

Some may read “Gladiator 2” (aka. G2) star and newcomer Paul Mescal’s story about his first-day interaction with director Ridley Scott as a stormtrooper’s royal rejuvenation, and others as the exclamation of a stubborn octogenarian: Mescal was nervous, and Sir Ridley came up to him brandishing a cigar and bellowed, “Your nerves are no good to me!”

I was in the latter camp. I’ve argued before that the 86-year-old’s recent output – in a career that has dipped into every genre other than musicals & animation – has felt like a sell-out when contrasted against the era of “Alien” & “Blade Runner 1″. These new projects have released too close together and are a roller-coaster of inconsistent quality (2021’s “House of Gucci” is 2 stars at most, while the same year’s “The Last Duel” is borderline 5). On top of that, he’s been talking about rehiring creepy-guy & Kremlin-espouser Gérard Depardieu to redub “1492”: a sign the auteur is experiencing some revisionist blues in his autumn years.

But G2 is so good, it made me rethink my pessimistic opinion toward Scott’s oeuvre. Director-of-photography John Mathieson was ‘misquoted’ in an interview, calling Scott “lazy” because he rushes through takes & shoots multi-cam. Surely, Scott has just uncovered the Grand Unifying Theory of filming quick & cheap on the studio’s dime: something the turbulent, cash-hemorrhaged industry post-COVID has been foraging for. All that’s left is Steven Soderbergh editing backstage and your $300-million historical epic will be done in a wisp.

Without taking away the throwback CGI & some script revisions, G2 could be a straight remake of the 2000 original. It’s huge in scope but easy to follow, with enough grue to satisfy my masculine desire, and a motley crew of supporting actors (Peter Mensah; Tim McInnerny; Matt Smith) who made me happy to see working.

The half-star deduction, believe-it-or-not, is predominantly against Denzel Washington. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see he’s enjoying his semi-retirement, but for a character who’s so integral to the movie’s denouement, Washington plays him superficially guileful: listen to how he pronounces “power” & “politics” at key points. And don’t get me started on that stupid monkey, and the one-too-many speeches at the tail-end.

Otherwise, from a technical perspective, Gladiator 2 is flawless. Film-stock purists should be documenting Scott’s methods for staying on-schedule & on-budget instead of deriding them: it’s the future.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Was a “Gladiator” sequel pointless, or justified? Are you impressed that it went from script-to-screen in a year (not including the 23 it took to develop)? Were the flashback clips alienating, or a handy reminder? Was Tim McInnerny the one Denzel was talking about when he said he kissed a guy “full on the lips”? Do you think Peter Mensah’s role will be expanded in the inevitable Director’s Cut release? And, possibly most important, do you think we’re headed for a period when, finally, we won’t have to hear about Pedro Pascal for at least a year, or do you think his MCU casting ensures he’ll dominate our screens into the foreseeable future? Leave you comments below!

Posted on by wd 0

Dub’s Take: Red One (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1.5 out of 5

Al Pacino’s been in the press promoting his new autobiography, and in a Variety interview, he discussed his divisive work choices in the 2000s: “…When you make $10 million dollars for a film … it’s $4.5 million (net) in your pocket. But you’re living above that because you’re high on the hog. And that’s how you lose it.”

I hadn’t seen a single trailer for “Red One” (aka. RO) before release: not in theatres, nor on any of my subscribed streaming services. All I had was what I’d read in the press: two conflicting pieces about producer/star Dwayne Johnson being unprofessional & overly generous on-set (despite floating the idea of RO in the first place); and an opinion piece about Chris Evans’ post-Avengers career torpedoing his “Captain America” legacy.

It’s unlikely Dwayne & Chris’ NDAs will let them admit the truth anytime soon. But this all created an interesting convergence of critical opinion & celebrityism in the public sphere, into my own assumptions as a potential viewer: I saw one leading man working to cultivate his image, and the other his lifestyle.

But RO’s first act played better than reviews suggested: a campy take on the action buddy-comedy through a Christmas lens. There was even a point I was prepared to put it on my 4-star Shelf Of Shame along with “Madame Web” & “The Crow”: two other widely-panned 2024 releases that I kinda, sorta liked a lot. How could you not like a movie with the line, “her ass punished us with its obscene wind”?

But whether it was the behind-the-scenes controversies, a creative lapse by director Jake Kasdan, or a masochistic storm of both, Kasdan can’t help recalling the airy, non-directional pacing of his 1998 debut “Zero Effect” instead of the manic, feature-length energy of his two “Jumanji” sequels. Rather than jumping systematically point-to-point like a tentpole picture should, Kasdan’s textured beats eventually sabotage the blockbuster nature of the two-hour film, for which the ultimate goal should be to get audiences in and out of the theatre as quickly as possible.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Zero Effect – so much so, I plagiarized part of it for a high school English assignment. But ZE is about characters with no social skills, and Red One is supposed to be a madcap, high-concept Holiday smash. What it is, is boring, and that’s low-key devastating.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are audiences headed for a new renaissance of Holiday pictures, or is the Golden Age over and all Christmas movies after 2010 forgettable filler? Aren’t seasonal movies filler by definition, or are there some like “Home Alone” that you can watch all year long? Do you side with my wife and think the talking polar bear & Krampus were enough to make Red One a classic? Leave your opinion in the comments below!

Posted on by wd 0

Dub’s Take: Venom The Last Dance (2024)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2 out of 5

Celebrityism sucks – when you ignore the money, the fame, and the opposite sex throwing themselves at you.

There’s no privacy. People Magazine’s website dedicates entire articles to single quotes, ensuring that everything you say stays digitally preserved. Pundits will scrutinize your choice of work as it correlates to your personal life like they’re connected or something.

And any old creepazoid will make unsolicited comments about your appearance. The most riveting thing about “Venom 3” is the disconnect of seeing actress Juno Temple as an adult: she looks completely different from the little chubby-cheeked girl I remember from 2009’s “Year One” & 2011’s “Killer Joe”. But time moves perpetually forward for everyone and, eventually, we’ll all look the same in a box.

Nope, V3 isn’t great. As much as I was entertained by the other movies in the series (particularly Andy Serkis’ blisteringly-paced second instalment), it was contemptuous of the filmmakers here to assume viewers remember the mythos without a recap, or binge-watching both entries again beforehand.

In this way, V3’s values align more with the MCU than either of Sony’s other entries: a canon-heavy plot is inched along without adding anything significant to the continuity, and – while actor Tom Hardy’s time with the series is indeed over – things are left open for a fourth film, possibly with a female lead. That also means there’s ‘sexy’ symbiotes with boobs here, if you care. I didn’t.

Speaking of Hardy, I don’t remember his Eddie Brock being so stiff. As he’s a co-writer (along with writer/director Kelly Marcel, who penned the other two films), Hardy is probably just visually communicating how ‘in charge’ Venom is over Brock’s body. However, when paired with Eddie’s disquietude, Hardy’s live-action work in V3 degenerates into a mumbling, shuffling mess: he sounds like he’s having more fun with his Venom voice than he looks acting as Eddie. It’s probably the worst performance Tom has ever given.

I like V3’s comedy sidebar in Vegas, and the pacing is surprisingly good here also, mercifully ending at the perfect point – though it’s not as jet-propulsioned as V2. And Juno Temple is a treasure at any age.

But here’s a more-kosher critical opinion: Venom 3 was pulled out of the oven too early, or maybe shouldn’t have been made at all. How many times have I said that this year? Too many.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you a fan of Sony’s “Venom” series, or do you, too, think it’s a series of diminishing returns? Would you buy tickets to a fourth film led by live-action Juno Temple & Clark Backo? Are you disappointed there’s no word yet whether Venom will make an appearance alongside the MCU’s Spider-Man? Let us know in the comments below!

Posted on by wd 0