“Red One” - On Johnson, on Evans, on Liu, and on Simmons.

Do you know what I expect out of a Dwayne Johnson led film? Very little. Do you know what I expect out of a Dwayne Johnson performance? Punching and scowling. Red One nailed my expectations right on the head. Conversely, I expect a lot out of Chris Evans and J.K. Simmons. My single Christmas wish for Red One was that the presence of Evans and Simmons would make Red One more than just a dumb action romp wrapped in tinsel and CGI polar bears. But I underestimated the black hole that is Johnson’s screen presence sucking the fun out of most of the movie.

Before I get into the guts of this film, you should know my twelve-year-old son liked the movie. Heck, the twelve-year-old still trapped inside of me - the one that enjoys crap like Renfield and Uncharted - liked Red One. But that doesn’t mean it was good. Twelve-year-old boys like it because it has killer snowmen, a talking polar bear (Reinaldo Faberlle), a fire breathing horse, Johnson punching things, Evans being sarcastic, a hot witch (Kiernan Shipka), and a literal slap fight between Johnson and Krampus (Kristofer Hivju). But I rarely let my inner twelve-year-old write these reviews and this isn’t one of those times.

On its surface, Red One is actually an okay movie. The plot is simple - Santa (Simmons) has been abducted by Gryla (Shipka) - who wants to siphon Santa’s power in order to imprison everyone on the naughty list - and Callum Drift (Johnson) and Jack O’Malley (Evans) must find and rescue Santa to save Christmas. Simple, right? The abduction scene itself is what we expect from this kind of movie. A car/snowmobile chase through the North Pole town.

The problems come with the subplots. Drift has lost faith in humanity because there are more naughty people than nice, so he is resigning as Santa’s head of security. This has no impact on anything since he wasn’t officially resigned until after Christmas. And you get no points for predicting that his faith will be restored before the credits roll. There is also an organization called the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (MORA) that is working with Drift to recover Santa. Led by director Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), MORA is as utterly pointless as Drift’s crisis of conscience. They are the cliched police force that is always nine steps behind the action, showing up just in time to clean up whatever mess is left after Drift and O’Malley conclude an action scene. If they show up at all.

Then there are the characters. Again, on the surface, the characters are just fine. Playing buddy cop to Drift and providing comic relief, O’Malley is a world-class hacker, but also a deadbeat dad. Because what Christmas movie isn’t complete without a broken family to mend? Santa is Santa, though he’s also a shredded Santa (Simmons looks like he discovered Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine workout regimen). Krampus is a fun goat-man thing who used to run amok with Gryla, but is now content to drink and be merry with other mythological creatures. And Gryla is every Christmas villain ever, though I don’t hate her idea of imprisoning every naughty person in their own snow globe. Preventing Santa from delivering some gifts seems like a bargain if it means no more wars, school shootings, or Joe Rogan.

The problem with the characters is they don’t mesh at all. On the plus side, Evans absolutely knows what kind of movie he’s in and does everything he can to carry the load. Conversely, Johnson has stapled his scowl to his face and seems to think he’s in a season of 24. There is zero chemistry between Evans and Johnson and their entire journey comes off like a trip to the DMV...after having some teeth pulled. Liu is the stupid chief from every 80’s action movie, Shipka is chewing up every scene she’s in, and Simmons looks bored during the sparse screentime Santa is giving, literally unconscious in half of them. Just, why? He's J.K. Simmons - use him! And the talking polar bear. This movie definitely needed more talking polar bear.

Despite the film being a joyless slog at times, including an embarrassingly awkward and decidedly unfunny possession scene featuring Nick Kroll, I didn’t hate it. By all rights, I should have. It represents a lot of what is wrong with many big blockbusters and not just the long list of garbage films featuring Johnson. With the inclusion of MORA and cameos by other myths, as well as a $250 million budget, it’s obvious that Warner Brothers and Johnson - through his Seven Bucks production company - think Red One will be the start of a franchise. While I’m a sucker for movies that get creative with stuff like “how does Santa deliver billions of presents in a single night” or “what’s the Achilles Heel of a magical, killer snowman if it’s not Aruba?” there probably aren’t enough twelve-year-old boys trapped in middle-aged men like me to save this film, let alone build a franchise.

Rating: Ask for fifteen dollars back and some holiday joy.

“Conclave” - Thoughts and prayers.

When I was a kid, my understanding of how the Catholic Church chose a new pope was they lit a fire for each cardinal and the color of the smoke determined if that guy was the next pope. Black meant go to the next name and white meant pope found. Being taught as a kid about the magic of God and Jesus, it made perfect sense that God would color the smoke. As it turns out, that is not how a new pope is chosen. In reality, the cardinals all vote and if one person doesn’t have a majority of votes, they burn all the ballots, throw a canister of black smoke on the fire to let people outside of the Sistine Chapel know there isn’t a new pope yet, then vote again. If someone wins enough votes, white smoke canister. The new film Conclave didn’t teach me these things, but it did present a very believable (yet fictional) depiction in which the cardinals behave just like all other politicians in elections - like humans.

In this story, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is leading and administering the papal conclave. Like a Catholic Mass, the film takes its sweet, sweet time actually getting to the point - in this case, the conclave itself. Much attention is paid to the details, trappings, and rituals gone through just to get to the election itself. It’s neat and beautiful and gives a feel for the gravitas of the event, but that kind of goes without saying. They’re electing the next pope, not the next town HOA treasurer.

Eventually, we are introduced to the cardinals most likely to be elected. First up is Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a liberal and supported by fellow liberal Lawrence. Next is Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a traditionalist, archconservative racist who views all other religions with utter contempt. Then there is Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), a milder conservative than Tedesco and every bit a sly politician. Finally, we have Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Nigerian and middle of the road guy on most topics, but socially conservative. Lawrence himself seems like another candidate, but he stresses multiple times that he absolutely does not want to be pope.

As if the competition between the men wasn’t enough, there is a separate mystery thrown into the mix. The deceased pope was up to something but did not let anyone in on what he was doing before he passed away. The only clue they have is the arrival of the recently elevated-to-Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz). After the conclave starts, nuggets of information regarding the pope’s activities start coming to light and Lawrence starts to dig into them. With a smidgen of help from Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), he uncovers truths that affect the conclave in ways that cause a whole lot more black smoke.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen so many movies, but I immediately knew how the conclave itself was going to end. But that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the journey, following Lawrence through the investigation. Nor did it prevent that little part of me that doubted what I thought I knew from holding my breath, even if just a tiny bit, every time they announced the voting results. And I most certainly didn’t guess the why part of the pope’s mystery before it was revealed. And what an intriguing reveal it is.

While I did enjoy the film, the drama surrounding the mystery was somewhat muted. The film doesn’t do enough to invest the audience in either the mystery or the outcome of the conclave. For a film heavily relying on dialogue, surprisingly little is devoted to character development. Beyond Lawrence and Bellini, it was hard to remember who was who. The film had to literally show the leading candidates in turn, as their names and vote tallies were read after the first vote, to make sure the audience could positively identify them. With no real backstories for any of the men (or Sister Agnes, for that matter), there was no real urgency or dread evinced to make the audience want to root for or against any of them.

But again, I did enjoy the film. The mystery is at least interesting, the visual details in the various sets are stunning, and Fiennes and Tucci delivered outstanding performances. That’s not to say the rest of the cast wasn’t also good; they simply weren’t given enough to do to really stand out (Rossellini and Lithgow, in particular, seemed woefully underused). Conclave isn’t necessarily a must-see in theaters...unless you are curious how papal conclaves actually work or just really like Ralph Fiennes.

Rating: Pray for two dollars back.

“Venom: The Last Dance” - Booooooooooo!

With the success of Venom ($856 million box office) in 2018, Sony Pictures executives were probably clinking champagne glasses, fully confident that their fledgling Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) was well-positioned for long-term success. You know, the same universe that doesn’t actually include Spider-Man. In 2021, Venom: Let There Be Carnage released and saw a $350 million decline in the box office to $507 million. While still a box office success, this had to cause at least one Sony exec to put his champagne glass down in concern for the SSU.

Then Morbius and Madame Web were inflicted upon audiences and, to put it mildly, audiences hated both movies. In fact, they hated them so much that both quickly became box office bombs (Madame Web bombing far more than Morbius). At this point, the execs had to be sweating bullets because the SSU suddenly looked like a smoldering disaster. “But,” they thought, “at least audiences will stick with the SSU after seeing Venom: The Last Dance, right? Right?!”

Before I tell you anything about Last Dance, tell me if you think this is a good sign...IMDb and the wiki page for Last Dance state its running time is one hour and fifty minutes. When the end credits started rolling, I checked my watch and only one hour and thirty minutes had passed since the start of the film. So, either we went through a time tunnel or a whole bunch of footage was recently chopped from the movie. Considering how terrible Last Dance turned out to be, I can’t imagine the circle of hell the cut footage came from.

My friend described Last Dance succinctly - that it comes off merely like a collection of things those same champagne swilling execs insisted must comprise the movie. Venom horse, venom fish, venom frog, different colored symbiotes (like Venom) with maybe some random powers, Area 51, a sing-a-long in a VW bus with a hippie family, a dance number, a rocket launcher, a tiny glimpse of the creator of the symbiotes (Knull), Las Vegas, monsters with wood chipper mouths, Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) riding on the outside of a cruising jetliner, and, for some reason, Chiwetel Ejiofor. And none of those things worked.

You might think I’m being harsh, but the movie takes exactly zero seconds to start sucking. It begins with an exposition dump to explain the movie we’re about to watch, except the dump itself is confusing. Then, it retcons the mid-credit scene from Let There Be Carnage (probably because Marvel Studios made them after a test screening) to effectively negate it. This is explicitly stamped home when Venom states “I’m so done with this multiverse shit” during a badly edited scene of Eddie/Venom making itself a drink at the bar. Only a few minutes into the film and we’re already wondering if Madame Web isn’t the worst movie of the year.

The film only becomes less coherent from there. All of those exec-ideas I listed two paragraphs ago are essentially rolled into a giant ball of garbage, set on fire, and drop-kicked into your car and all you can do is watch it burn. Cringe along with Eddie as he is forced to listen to hippie dad (Rhys Ifans) and his family sing “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Wish somebody would chloroform you so don’t have to watch Venom and Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) dance together to ABBA for no reason in her Vegas penthouse suite. Pop enough ibuprofen to prevent going into a seizure from the terribly shot and edited CGI fight scenes that somehow manage to be boring. Cry into your popcorn every time Ejiofor (as General Strickland) performs as if he forgot he isn’t in a serious movie like 12 Years a Slave or even a good popcorn flick like Doctor Strange. Try not to boo at everyone in the theater laughing at unfunny and poorly delivered wisecracks that were clearly added in post-production by a badly coded AI. You know what? Disregard that last one - boo to your heart’s content.

I could go on (and on), but I think you get the point. If Morbius and Madame Web haven’t fully killed the SSU, I have a really hard time believing Last Dance will do anything more than keep the franchise on life support, if it doesn’t pull the plug altogether. And that has to terrify the execs looking at their December calendars and seeing the release date for the next SSU movie - Kraven the Hunter - fast approaching. Probably a good idea to keep that next bottle of champagne on ice.

Rating: Ask for all of your money back for all of the Venom movies and boo loudly while you do it.