Category Archives: Thriller

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

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Venom: Let There Be Carnage    4 stars

I went to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage without having seen the original Venom, thus not knowing what to expect. This movie out of the Marvel universe can be described as a buddy B-movie with plenty of humor about a codependent relationship between a man and his alien symbiote. The premise had been set up in the original with failed journalist, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) having formed a bond with a bodyless alien intelligent being called Venom. Venom helps Eddie out with his writing, crime solving career and in return Venom, gets to eat the heads of bad guys. The charm of the movie comes with the comic banter between the two with Venom using an inner voice in conversations with Eddie. And there is a tremendous amount of energy involved in Venom’s antics with his tentacles in the small apartment they share with a pair of chickens. The relatively short movie (for a Marvel movie) does have something of a plot involving a serial killer on death row named Cletus (a fiendish Woody Harrelson) who grants an interview to Eddie with dire consequences. It takes about half the movie before the real villain appears in the form of another alien symbiote who calls himself Carnage and the inevitable battle ensues. (Just the name of this movie gives you a good clue about the level of violence you are about to see.) Director Andy Serkis uses Hardy’s acting skills well in the funny codependent conversations in which Hardy voices both Eddie and Venom. I occasionally like to try out a good B-movie and this one was just the ticket.

Emilia Pérez

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Emilia Pérez       4 ½ stars

Emilia Pérez by director Jacques Audiard is a movie that defies genre. It’s part crime thriller, part opera and part melodrama. Perhaps most of all it’s about trans identity and redemption of the past. It certainly goes against any expectations I may have had. Early on we meet, Rita (Zoe Saldana), a lawyer who defends criminals in the courts of Mexico City. She is good at her job, but also very alone. She is “called on” by a cartel leader named Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascón in a career defining role) who wants to hire her for a most unusual job. Manitas wants to change his life and become the woman that he feels he was meant to be. Rita accepts the offer which entails her finding a doctor to perform the transformation, move Manitas’s family out of Mexico and to help fake his death. Years later, while working in London, Rita meets a woman at a gathering named Emilia Pérez. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that Emilia is the transformed Manitas and that she is not finished with Rita yet. Emilia misses her children and wants to have Rita reunite the family, but with Emilia posing as a long-lost aunt so that even her own family does not know the truth. Even Manitas’s wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez) does not recognize her. To relieve her guilt, Emilia establishes a foundation to find the tens of thousands of victims of the drug wars so that relatives can know the truth of what happened to their loved ones, many of whose deaths she was responsible for. Thus, the movie brings the tragedies of the drug wars out into the open showing what has happened to a society that has lost so much. Mexico has lost more than 100,000 people this way. And all of this is done in performances of song and dance, making the movie an opera with a tragic story to tell. Zoe Saldana is especially talented as a dancer as she condemns the evildoers she has been acquainted as she moves from one tabletop to another. But it is Sofia Gascón especially who gives the greatest performance as both parts of her role. The actress is herself a transgender making her well suited to the role, in addition to her acting ability. Selena Gomez also puts in a convincing performance as the wife in a part that is miles from her Disney girl roles of the past and allows her to connect with her Mexican roots. The movie is probably not for everyone, but if the idea of a crime thriller set to music piques your interest you should give it a try.

Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho            4 stars

In Edgar Wright’s latest thriller drama horror Last Night in Soho, we first meet Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie of Jojo Rabbit and Leave No Trace) in an old house where her bedroom is decorated in old movie posters of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sweet Charity and other relics of the sixties. She dances to sixties pop tunes played on a turntable in an elaborate dress made of newspapers. But Ellie really lives in the present in rural Cornwall, England and is fascinated by everything about the sixties and dreams of becoming an accomplished fashion designer. Then Ellie gets her big chance when she is accepted to a famous fashion school in London.  The young girl doesn’t exactly fit in with her streetwise classmates and soon moves off campus, renting a room above a bar where landlady, Miss Collins (the exquisite Diana Rigg in her final performance before passing away last year) says she needs to pay two months rent upfront and no male guests are allowed after 8:00. It is then that things take a mysterious turn when Ellie goes to sleep and the room becomes a sort of teleportal device sending Ellie to a hopping neon light covered 1965 London with all the flashy fashions and pop songs of the sixties. The mood of the movie shifts as the themes become darker and more sinister. Ellie becomes connected to a girl called Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch and Emma) who may or may not actually exist. Unlike Ellie, Sandie faces the world with total confidence and owns the room she enters. She perfectly nails a rendition of Petula Clark’s 1965 hit Downtown. The movie embodies the look and feel of the decadent time period of the sixties and has some fine performances including Matt Smith’s Jack, a sort of sixties pimp who operates the acts at a London gentlemen’s club.  Eventually, though the movie devolves into full blown horror thriller mayhem when it gets to an over the top ending. I admit that I did not see the ending coming, so I won’t say more about it. If you are in the mood for a good thriller horror film, Last Night in Soho hits the spot.

Conclave

Conclave              4 ½ stars

In Edward Berger’s new movie Conclave, we get a peek at one of the most secret societies in the world. (Berger previously gave us All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022.) The conclave is the Catholic Church’s process for selecting a new Pope after the passing of the preceding his Holiness. In the movie, based on the book by Robert Harris, the Pope has just passed away and within hours Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) arrives and finds that it is his job to manage the conclave, only he is experiencing his own crisis of faith. He also considered the father to be a friend. As the cardinals gather, we learn who some of the candidates are and that some have their own agenda and that there are some who had deep disagreements with the progressiveness of the former pope. We also see that divisions between the cardinals extend beyond church policy and into race and country of origin. As we get into the voting process, secrets are revealed, and the intrigue expands. We learn of secret meetings that the Pope had just before his passing. To an extent the story is like a spy story or even a murder mystery. The cardinals are split into two camps, the old school conservatives and the progressives who preach tolerance of other faiths and the LGTBQ community. Each faction is maneuvering to get their guy to the necessary number votes to be named the new Pope. I appreciated the efforts of the filmmakers in making sure we can identify all the important characters. Many movies miss on this matter. There are a few surprises that occur late in the story, and I cannot say more about them for fear of spoiling your enjoyment. The movie should not be considered a form of high literature and is really just interesting entertainment that includes some very good performances. I expect to see some Academy Award nominations including acting awards for Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. I would not count on it to win Best Picture at this point though. Just go see it and enjoy the experience.

Better Days

Better Days         4 stars

The movie Better Days, released in 2019 is a representation of the high stress levels on high school students in China combined with the prevalence of bullying among peers in the schools. Based on actual events it follows the life of Chen Nian, a high school girl going through final exams which determine the fate of millions of Chinese every year. Nian is from an impoverished home where she lives with her mother and where they are being hounded by creditors. As if this isn’t enough Nian is being bullied by some of the girls at her school, but the level of bullying is much more extreme than what kids experience here in America. It rises to the level of criminal behavior, and for poor Nian the police and her teachers are completely ineffective in dealing with the problem, so she turns to Xiao Bei, a local street punk who himself is constantly beaten by local gangs. Bei vows to protect her from the abusive classmates. It is then that the movie turns into more of a doomed romance story between the two main characters. There are more aspects of the story including a police investigation and deaths of some students that I won’t go into, but it is a very compelling story with some good performances. The story does get a little confusing as some of the editing is done with flashbacks and because of the unfamiliar Chinese names the characters have. It helps to be able to do a little rewinding to follow the plot. The movie is significant as the real events led Chinese authorities to examine the problem of bullying in their schools that resulted in reforms that successfully reduced the problem. Be warned that the level of violence toward these kids is more than we would expect in a story concerning high school students. Better Days was nominated for Best International Feature Film in 2021.

Piggy

PIGGY                                                   3 suns

Once again we dive into the horror genre, this time to a rural village in Spain with an especially bloody story about a bullied teenager. Sara works in her parent’s butcher shop and happens to be very overweight making her the object of abuse from some of the other girls in the town. After another day of torment, she witnesses a stranger kidnap and beat three of the girls but is frozen in fear as he drives away with them in his van. Instead of saying anything to the police about what she knows she is intrigued by this stranger and tracks him down for reasons she is not sure of. The film is shocking and especially violent with plenty of bloody scenes. It is a cautionary tale of adolescent behavior and the desire to be accepted. This one is not for everybody.

Alice

Alice                                      4 suns

An imaginative film that I thoroughly enjoyed was Alice. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a house slave on a southern plantation where she is owned by a cruel white man who maintains discipline through pitiless beatings. One day Alice has had all she can take and makes a run for freedom, only to find herself in modern 1973 America where she meets a kind truck driver named Frank (Common). This blending of time periods is not a case of time travel but represents a southern plantation that kept its slavey practice in place for more than 100 years. In this story Alice quickly catches on to the changes made in America transforming herself in the style of Pam Greer of the blaxploitation films of the seventies. What a cultural statement! The film is an excellent portrayal of the struggle of Black Americans against oppression across eras of American history. During the Q&A, the filmmakers talked about how there have been actual cases of people kept in slavery up to the 1960’s but they did not go into details about how this happened. It would be interesting to learn more about it.

Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil                      3 suns

Sundance always has its share of imaginative horror films so today I took in Speak No Evil. Here a young European filmmaker has conceived a story that starts with a Danish family on vacation in Italy who meet a Dutch couple that they easily make friends with. When the Dutch couple invites them to their home in the Netherlands, they quickly accept bringing their young daughter with them. Then when the hosts start to behave in some odd and eccentric ways such as disrespecting the wife’s dietary restrictions, the visitors do their best to be accepting and maintain politeness. But then as is always the case in horror movies, certain things happen, choices are made and inevitable consequences result. Things do not turn out well for our visitors. If you liked the movie Midsommar from 2019, then Speak No Evil is for you.

Emergency

Emergency         3 ½ suns

In the comedy Emergency, graduate student Kunle and his best friend, Sean are about to go on an epic journey, partying all night at the fraternity parties at their college campus. But the plans of the two young black men are interrupted when they discover an unconscious white girl on the floor of their house. The pair along with their Latino friend, Carlos realize the danger they are in if the police are alerted to their situation and must improvise to get the girl to safety without endangering their own lives. What follows is a comedy of errors as the men deal with one mishap after another. The film started as a short film from a few years ago that has now been expanded to the full length movie now showing. It is a good combination of silly comedy making a statement about the perceptions that young black men must face despite the levels of success they may reach.

892

892                                         4 suns

892 was the winner of the U.S. Dramatic Ensemble Cast Special Jury Award. It is a fairly straightforward story concerning a desperate former U.S. marine who has decided to hold employees of a bank hostage so that he can receive what is owed to him by the VA. I thought it seemed a little slow moving for a hostage taking drama. There were few action scenes and most of the film dealt with the negotiations between the marine and the police negotiator. But by the end I realized that this was a representation of an actual event which explains a lot, especially why such a subject was chosen. The acting performances were especially superb including John Boyega of Star Wars as Brian, the marine and Michael Kenneth Williams as the negotiator in what would be his final film role. This film is very unlike one from last year called Prime Time, also about a hostage situation, but was more dramatic and tension filled. Of course that one was a fictional story. 892 serves as a reminder about how our obligations to those who serve often go unfilled.