“The Fabelmans” - It’s not Fabelman. It’s Fabel-Man. He’s a fable...man.

After watching The Fabelmans, I wondered what certain directors’ childhoods might look like. I imagine Martin Scorsese had a nanny who was also a hitman. Baz Luhrmann rarely ate food that wasn’t laced with LSD. George Romero constantly buried his friends on the beach. Quentin Tarantino definitely tortured animals. Stanley Kubrick was the kid in The Shining. And Steven Spielberg? For sure a kid with a video camera at all times, maybe even a clapboard tucked into his belt. The Fabelmans shows that video camera and more.

Similar to James Gray’s Armageddon Time, The Fabelmans is a fictionalized depiction of parts of Spielberg’s childhood. Unlike Armageddon Time, The Fabelmans has a plot and also a point. It’s right there in the title - Spielberg is going to tell us a story with a moral.

Spielberg’s analogue is Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle). We first meet young Sammy as he is being coerced into a movie theater by his parents, Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) to see The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy is scared of seeing giant people on screen and parents assure him that they aren’t really that big. Once inside, Sammy is transfixed by what he sees on screen, instantly falling in love with moving pictures. This could be the end of the story, one quick anecdote to explain Spielberg’s love of film, but Spielberg is a better storyteller than that.

Back home, Sammy tries to recreate the train wreck scene from the movie. While Burt scolds Sammy for not taking care of his trains, Mitzi encourages Sammy, lending Sammy Burt’s 8MM camera. After a successful recreation, Sammy starts making films with his three sisters, gradually working out how to do different kinds of effects and clearly having fun. Sammy has clearly found his calling, much to the chagrin of his computer-building father and delight of his pianist mother. Then, his father gets a job offer in Phoenix, Arizona and the family moves there, taking with them Burt’s best friend and business partner Bennie (Seth Rogen).

It’s in Phoenix that the film really gets into the meat of Spielberg’s childhood story. After several years of honing his craft, now-teenage Sammy is making complex, elaborate films. As a Boy Scout, Sammy figures he can earn his photography badges through making films and enlists his entire troop in his projects. He also captures on film a family camping trip, one that inexplicably includes Bennie. It is through all these films that Sammy discovers how powerful film can be. More than just showing the things that are happening, Sammy realizes he can manipulate how audiences perceive what they are seeing and also that film can also capture things that weren’t intended to be seen. This is all classic Spielberg and, yes, we are being manipulated by him.

One more promotion for Burt, and the family is once again on the move, this time to Northern California…this time without third-wheel best-friend Bennie. Here, we get a couple more fables in the form of Sammy dealing with being bullied at school for being a Jew, Sammy navigating his first romantic relationship with a devout Christian, and Sammy grappling with his parent’s relationship falling apart. That’s a lot of crap for a seventeen-year old to deal with and he finds his way through it all with film.

All of these small stories (and a couple others) add up to a solid narrative explaining why Spielberg is the way he is. At no point does the film ever feel trite or that Spielberg is indulging himself, rather that Spielberg keeps the perspective that he’s trying to entertain an audience. The story flows quite nicely, there are heroes and villains, and we feel for Sammy throughout his childhood. I also quite enjoyed LaBelle’s performance, who really sells us on every emotion Sammy experiences. Plus, there are a couple of scene stealing moments from supporting roles in Judd Hirsch (Sammy’s uncle) and the Christian girlfriend (Chloe East).

If I was going to pick one director who could pull off making a movie about them self, I’d pick Spielberg. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t skeptical going into The Fabelmans because how could I not be? It’s blatant narcissism. But nobody is better than Spielberg at crafting a story and he proved it again with The Fabelmans. I even would have been okay if he showed young Sammy with that video camera tucked into a holster on his belt.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back, which is what we expect from Spielberg.

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” - Yeah, PG-13 Carnage.

In order to understand how low my expectations were for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, think about some of the movies that have come out this year that should have been entertaining, but absolutely crapped the bed. Without Remorse, Mortal Combat, F9, and Snake Eyes were terrible and that is coming right on the heels of the abomination that was Wonder Woman 1984. And I only expected one of those movies to be non-stupid. Then, think about the first Venom film. It was so unremarkable that I remember almost nothing about it, including that I said to only ask for half your money back. To be fair, that film came out in 2018, which was roughly three hundred years ago, so it’s mostly a vague memory at this point.

(Not a lot to SPOILER, but there is one thing in the movie worth keeping a secret.)

A friend of mine asked if they needed to watch Venom before watching Let There Be Carnage. Answer? No. Really no. It’s not like Sony had some grand plan for Venom. This is the same company that killed the Spider-Man franchise...twice. This is the same company that got into a pissing match with Marvel over how to split the money that Marvel made them after Marvel fixed Spider-Man. Venom was nothing more than Tom Hardy arguing with himself in two different, equally obnoxious voices, except when it was nothing more than two CGI blobs swirling around a clearly bored Michelle Williams.

The only thing we need to know is that Venom is an alien symbiote attached to reporter Eddie Brock (Hardy) that sometimes appears as a black tentacle with a face attached to Eddie’s back, sometimes engulfs Eddie’s body as a black, muscular, nightmare, acid-trip Spider-Man, and sometimes is nothing more than Hardy yelling lines at himself in his worst Batman voice. This kind of worked in Venom, at least enough to feel fresh, but it gets annoying fast in Let There Be Carnage. You’ll be glad to be distracted by chickens a few minutes into the film. That’s right, chickens.

What little plot exists in Let There Be Carnage is thin enough as to be invisible. Venom wants to eat the brains of criminals, but Eddie has him on a diet of chickens and chocolate. They bicker like an old married couple and a lot of things in Eddie’s apartment get broken. Then, they have a breakup of sorts. Worst romantic comedy ever.

Meanwhile, serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) is about to be executed and wants Eddie to tell Cletus’ story to the world. You know, for reasons. When Eddie gets too close to Cletus’ cage, Cletus bites Eddie and gets some Eddie-Venom blood in his mouth. We see the blood jiggling on its own and this is how Carnage comes to be. No, seriously. It is a known fact that if you bite a symbiote-infected human, it will birth a brand new symbiote and be red because...human blood is red. It’s better known in medical circles as the Reverse Zombie.

Obviously, Cletus escapes his execution now that he has Carnage to provide super powers. Now-free Cletus wants to rescue his past love interest, Shriek (Naomie Harris), from a secret lab/prison. He and Carnage agree that after they bust her out, they will exact revenge on Venom, Eddie, and the cop that captured Shriek so many years ago. Again, for reasons. In movie circles, this plot is better known as the Sony shit-take.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie. Like its predecessor, Let There Be Carnage is thin on plot, heavy on Tom Hardy trying to prove we’ve all overestimated his acting chops, more of Michelle Williams looking really confused as to how she ended up in a non-tear-jerking, non-Oscar-bait, non-drama, Woody Harrelson being directed to just go nuts man, and of course, more swirling CGI blobs fighting each other. And, it doesn’t even have the decency to be rated-R. To be fair, I knew going in that this would be what it was. I was mildly curious as to how Andy Serkis would do as director and the answer was what if Gollum had won? But, my curiosity ended there. The only saving graces of the movie were its short running time (97 minutes) and jaw-dropping mid-credits scene. Turns out, Sony might have just learned something in their fight with Marvel.

Rating: Ask for all your money back because it met my expectations.