Save the Last Dance

I enjoy the We Hate Movies podcast, although I don't always take their advice. For instance, in an "On Screen Live" YouTube episode, they talked quite a bit about Venom: The Last Dance (2024). Their conclusion: It's barely a movie, and you should avoid it. But guess what?

It starts rather incoherently: Tom Hardy and the Venom symbiote are stuck in an alternate Earth by Dr. Strange (did this happen at the end of Venom 2? Can't be bothered to check). Specifically, in a Mexican bar, where they are getting smashed to "Tequila". But some random creep played by Andy Serkis in a monster dimension gives us some exposition about destroying all symbiotes and ... We weren't paying attention. But somehow, they open a portal, and we're back in our usual dimension.

They head for New York to clear their names for crimes committed in Venom 2 (I guess), but are forced off of the plane they are attached to the outside of by a creature from the monster dimension, and land in Nevada. It turns out that Area 51 is being closed down, but not the secret lab deep beneath it. This lab, run by Chiwetel Ejiofor and scientist Juno Temple, has been studying symbiotes, and has several in containment. They are trying to give some hosts, but the hosts keep dying in agony. Oh well, science, I guess.

Hardy gets picked up by a hippie family in a VW bus. The dad, Rhys Ifans, is a saucer nut, and wants to see Area 51 before it's gone. His wife is into it, his young son and teen daughter less so, but surprisingly cheerful. 

They stop in Vegas on the way, and Venom figures he'll rich on the slots, but loses everything instead. But they meet Peggy Lu, the convenience store owner from the previous movies (and Across the Spider-Verse). She has won big, gotten a make-over and penthouse suite. Her and Venom have a disco dance number (when did they have time to rehearse?). 

Then it's off to Area 51, where we get some big battles. The trapped symbiotes get released, and bond with some of the scientists (by the way, are these scientists evil, misguided or just dumb?). Even Ifans gets some action in.

I wouldn't say this was a great movie. I think it worked better than Carnage, even though it was a lot shaggier. I think I preferred the lack of serious villains to the attempts at villains in Carnage. Anyway, we sort of enjoyed this, without paying too much attention. And if I left anything out of this review, it's because I wasn't paying attention. 

Aliens Redux

After Ms. Spenser watched it on an airplane, we decided to watch Alien: Romulus (2024) at home. I thought it was a perfect distillation of Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 (didn't I blog this one?). Ms. Spenser decided it was a stale rehash. 

It starts with an expedition finding the wreck of the Nostromo and salvaging an odd black cocoon (with something Xeno-shaped within). Then we go a dark and dismal colony planet. Teen (young adult?) Callee Spaeny is trying to get a transfer to nicer planet, but instead gets her contract extended. Her best friend is a stuttering, autistic-seeming android, played by David Jonsson. He was altered by her dead father so that his prime directive is to do what is best for Spaeny. 

Some of Spaeny's young friends have a plan to get to a better planer: Highjack a ship, then go to the derelict space station to pick up some cryo-sleep pods, and head out. Soon they are stuck on the station with a Xenomorph or two. (BTW, the station has two sides, Romulus and Remus. This may have meant something, or just been a cool name.)

Director Fede Alvarez and writing partner Rodo Sayagues took a lot of what's best from the earlier entries. For ex, the colony world from Aliens. The station had a nice throwback look (CRT monitors - well, maybe the colony didn't have the resources to do flat or holograph screens), but mainly it got the haunted feeling of the original. There were plot points, like someone being quarantined because they'd been face hugged, which is the right thing to do, but some people don't get it. 

Like I  said, I liked how true to the vision this was, and Ms. Spenser thought it was too derivative. On the other hand, I didn't feel like it was the greatest of all Alien movies, and Ms. Spenser enjoyed it for what it was. I'm not sure this is one of those retro-sequels, where the key is nostalgia, but it might be.

Go Your Own Way

Before Rumours (2024), I had watched exactly one Guy Maddin movie, and thought I had him figured out. Rumours is completely different, but I didn't have to change my opinion at all.

The movie takes place at a G7 summit in Germany, hosted by Cate Blanchett, chancellor of Germany. The final dinner will be held in a pavilion in a park, with just the seven leaders. On the walk to the pavilion, they stop to see an archeological dig, where several Bog Men are being excavated - ancient corpses. perfectly preserved in the mud of a marsh, except their bones are dissolved. Most of the leaders are not impressed.

We also see that Roy Dupuis, PM of Canada, has had a fling with Nikki Amuka-Bird, PM of the UK. He's a young, handsome man with a man bun, interested in renewing the fling, while she wants to keep it professional between them now. But Blanchett seems to be interested.

At the dinner, the leaders try to work out a short joint statement on the summit. Their efforts are not very inspiring. Charles Dance, president of the USA, falls asleep. Dupuis keeps storming off - and hears strange sounds. Blanchett follows him, and, yep, they get it on.

But when they return, they notice that the waiters have disappeared. And there cel phones don't work (except the Italian PM, he didn't bring his). It's getting dark. Dupuis wanders off and finds a brain the size of a small car. Bog men are seen lurking in the shadows. Bog men are doing something freaky in the shadows. And so on. 

There are a couple of comic themes to this. The most obvious is how helpless our leaders are without their aides and servants. But Maddin doesn't really lean on this. He's more interested in how taken up by anodyne, pointless "joint statements". There's a lovely scene where one of the leaders is musing about the first G7 joint statement. He starts to recite it from memory and the whole group joins in. And it's the most boring, meaningless load of BS you've ever heard. 

Of course, Maddin also has to focus on Canadianness (Canadianity?). His Canadian is sexy, brooding, handsome, and in the end, puts together a stirring (boring) statement, and saves the day (?). In fact, I think the biggest joke of the movie is that leaders are people, with romantic entanglements, weaknesses, petty grudges and so forth. Actually, it's a joke on us all. 

The Gorge (Obscured by Clouds)

We recently bought an Apple TV box. It came with a three-month free subscription to Apple TV+, so we figured we should try it out. The Gorge (2025) had just come out, and we felt like some dumb direct-to-streaming action, so we tried it out. 

It starts with Anya Taylor-Joy hiding in a cave in a cliff, and then performing a long-range assassination. She is a Lithuanian working for the Russians, with a terminally ill father. She is going on a year-long mission, he plans to kill himself on Valentine's Day. We then meet Miles Teller, a mercenary whose nightmares keep him from sleeping. 

Teller is "private security", a mercenary and sniper. Sigourney Weaver, a shadowy high-level intelligence operative, recruits him for a year-long mission, the details of which she will not divulge.

The mission turns out to be manning one of two watchtowers, one on either side of the titular gorge. The sides are steep and the bottom is perpetually hidden by fog. His predecessor gives him a 2-minute briefing and takes off. He soon realizes that the watchtower on the other side is manned by Taylor-Joy. 

Teller is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, Taylor-Joy more of a good-time girl. She starts writing signs for him to read through his spotting scope. He tells her they aren't supposed to communicate. Then one day, Taylor-Joy's birthday, he finds out what they are watching for, when  horde of demon zombies come crawling up the walls of the gorge.

They use their automated weapons and sharpshooting skills to repel the attack, and enjoy the thrill of victory. Taylor-Joy calls it her best birthday ever. 

They continue to converse at long distance, until Valentine's Day. Teller wants to comfort Taylor-Joy, and actually ziplines across the gorge. They have a tender few days together, then he has to head back to check in. But the line breaks and he falls into the gorge - with a parachute, thank God. Taylor-Joy armors up and jumps after him.

So up to now, we have had a romantic military spy thriller, with a touch of SF. Once they get down in the gorge, it becomes a monster horror movie. This part is fun too, especially because our two stars get to work together. But it is kind of a jarring shift in tone.

Fortunately, we liked both tones, and were able to hang with the transition. I particularly love Anya Taylor-Joy (as I have mentioned a few times, I think). Miles Teller is a little harder to warm up to. Maybe I just hate him for that weak Reed Richards turn. Of course, Weaver as the villain of the piece was great, if short. 

I think this was a cut above the usual dumb action movies coming out lately. Maybe either half could have been a standard issue direct-to-streamer, but put them together, and add Anya Taylor-Joy, and you've got something. 

First and Last

I think I heard about Last and First Men (2020) on a random film podcast. Someone mentioned it in passing (Josh Olson?) on some random podcast and I was intrigued. Short summary: Voice-over narration based on the Olaf Stapledon story accompanied by slow, black and white shots of Soviet brutalist monuments. Directed and scored by Johann Johannsson.

And that's really almost all I can say about it. The story is told by Tilda Swinton, as a transmission from millions of years in the future, telling a little about the future history of the world, and the comping apocalypse (for them). The visuals are grainy, 16-mm slow pans of concrete sculptures and buildings from the Soviet era. Some could be stills, except for clouds moving in the background. There are no humans, few animals, not even many plants. Mostly concrete and sky. 

The music is very Johannsson: atonal, eerie, organic. It ties the whole thing together. 

I haven't read any Stapledon since maybe high school, but remembered his stories as very cosmic in theme, while down to earth in prose. It was well suited for this kind of meditation. I liked watching this a lot, although I treated it as more of a music video than a story

Twice the Action

I picked out a few mindless action movies with low expectations: The Killer’s Game (2024) and Hidden Strike (2023). I wasn't disappointed.

The Killer's Game stars Dave Bautista as the titular killer. His assignment is to kill someone at a modern dance performance at the Budapest Opera House. Very swank. He makes the kill, and takes a moment to observe the main dancer on stage, Sophia Boutella. When security starts shooting up the place, she hurts her ankle. So in the confusion, he picks her up and carries her outside. They have an instant attraction, but he is struck by a blinding headache, and runs off. 

But he tracks her down later to return her phone, and they start a cute courtship. He is very hesitant and shy, because of his work, and she thinks he's charming. But he goes to the doctor, and discovers that he has Creutzfeldt-Jakobs, and will soon be incapacitated, then dead.

Now around here, I got really excited. First, when he first went to the doc, the doc mentioned his scars and injuries, calling them his "resume", and cautioned him about CTE. In real life, Bautista is trying to move out of action movies and into more human roles, losing a lot of weight. Then he is talking to Boutella about her ankle and they start comparing injuries. So there is a fighting/dancing analogy being. I would like to see dance choreography treated like fight choreography in movies, bringing the excitement and skill without so much violence. I couldn't wait to see how this played out.

I knew the next part from the basic plot summary: He decides to put a contract out on himself, so he wouldn't go through the dementia stages of CJD. He goes to his handler, Ben Kingsley. For some reason, Kingsley is sort of playing his character, the Rabbi, from Lucky Number Slevin. He refuses to kill Bautista, who is like a son to him. So he goes to Pom Klementieff, a Korean mobster whose father was killed by Bautista. She'll take the job, and starts sending killer after him. 

And as you might have guessed, he was misdiagnosed. He does not have CJD, maybe it's just stress? I feel like this is a common movie plot, but can't place it. 

So I'm all psyched for a movie about moving out of a violent profession due to wear and tear, relating it to Bautista's real life aspirations, including some relationship between dancing and fighting. Instead, we get a ridiculous succession of themed assassins trying to kill Bautista and failing. They include a flamenco fighter, two stripper fighters, two violent Scotsmen, moto-cross killers, a gang of Korean pop-star types, with Terry Crews hanging back, waiting for the fee to go up. It was fun and silly, and very much not what I was hoping for. Still thought it was great.

Hidden Strike also starred and ex-wrestler, Jobn Cena, as well as Jackie Chan. It's set in the near future, during the oil wars. In an unnamed Middle Eastern country, rebels are besieging an oil refinery. Jackie Chan's security team is called in to extract them (including his estranged daughter). Meanwhile, John Cena is a mercenary, semi-retired, heading up an orphanage for the kids whose parents died in the wars. His brother convinces him to do One Last Mission to get money for the villagers' water. 

It turns out more or less that Cena's brother is on the team attacking the refinery. Or maybe not - there seem to be many groups at play. Anyway, Cena and Jackie first fight, then join together to save the hostages and the village. 

There's some cute interplay between Cena and Chan, and Chan can still bring it both in the back-talk and fighting. There's one set piece where Chan is fighting the bad guy in a factory with a fire suppressant cannon. A good Chan fight always manages to use all the possibilities of a prop or setting, and this was a good one. There are also several bus fights, a trope I enjoy. But overall, this was a mess. I think the hand of the Chinese government is way too prominent, so the dramatic beats are all undercut by propaganda beats. 

Still, I didn't expect much and wasn't disappointed. I got more than I needed from one movie, and about what I expected from the other.  

Passionless

I'll try to keep this short: After sound came to motion pictures, silent stars like Buster Keaton were considered a problem. Could they be make money in a talkie world? One solution was to pair them with younger, more verbal comics. In Buster's case, this was Jimmy Durante. Hence, The Passionate Plumber (1932).

Quick summary: Parisian Irene Purcell has a married lover, Gilbert Roland. She wants to break off with him, she wants to keep him, she wants to make him jealous. She also has some plumbing problems, so she sends her chauffeur, Jimmy Durante to fetch plumber Buster Keaton. When Keaton shows up at Purcell's place at the same time as Roland, she pretends that Keaton is her suitor. And the merry mixups ensue.

One of these mixups is that Keaton is really an inventor who has added a flashlight to a pistol as an early laser sight. He hopes to sell this idea to the French army, but every time he gets close to a general, he pulls the gun and is assumed to be an assassin. Plus, he gets into duels with everyone he meets, like Homer Simpson with the glove slaps. 

Keaton does get a little bit of physical comedy here and there, although I didn't see any daring stunts. Durante gets to do a little of his patented malapropism, and also some romance with the maid (Polly Moran). But neither is served well by the movie, and don't work especially well against each other. 

Amazingly, MGM made three movies pairing Keaton and Durante (the others were What, No Beer and Speak Easily - ironic, since these movies drove Keaton to alcoholism). Durante went on to become whatever he became (respected comic relief?), and Keaton never recovered until the 60s, when he was slowly re-discovered. 

Oh, well, we still have the silents.