REVIEW: Venom: Let There Be Carnage [2021]

Responsibility is for the mediocre. I’m pretty sure there’s more exposition in Venom: Let There Be Carnage than there was in Venom. It’s not without reason. At the time of the original’s inception, Sony had their hands tied. The Marvel characters they had—namely those from the Spider-Man universe—couldn’t integrate with the Marvel Cinematic Universe at-large without an agreement like the one that allowed Spidey into the Avengers. And since Spider-Man was an Avenger, he couldn’t interact with those characters either. Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) was therefore on an island alone…

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REVIEW: Late Night [2019]

You’re a little old and a little white. You can imagine how this film would have gone had a white male wrote it. The affirmative action jokes would play strictly for laughs rather than poignant introspection. The strong woman television host would use masculine tropes to service her goals rather than understand that a double standard can’t be weaponized in ways that end up affirming said double standard. And the idea that the fish-out-of-water newcomer entering the fray to shake the status quo could potentially date the “hot” co-worker would…

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REVIEW: Venom [2018]

Have a nice life. If you really think about it, Venom was never going to be R-rated. I don’t care what director Ruben Fleischer alluded to in an interview before production began or that star Tom Hardy currently believes the best forty minutes of the film were cut. As soon as Sony decided to move ahead with this long-gestating spin-off title despite Spider-Man himself making his way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and seemingly rendering it impossible to ever put the two onscreen together), the reality was cemented for Eddie…

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REVIEW: Beside Still Waters [2014]

“Nothing, buddy. You keep on … sulking.” When a feature length debut bows at only 76-minutes you think two things. One: it barely contains a short film worth of content and has been pumped full of fat. Or Two: it’s a shallow piece that goes nowhere and inevitably feels incomplete. It’s a horrible thing that these became the only two options I could see in front of me when sitting down to Chris Lowell‘s (Piz for all you “Veronica Mars” fans) Beside Still Waters. I was actually excited to check…

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