The latest film releases include Venom: The Last Dance, Conclave, New Wave, and No One Asked You. Weighing in are Alonso Duralde and Dave White, film critics and co-hosts of the movie podcast Linoleum Knife.
Venom: The Last Dance
Tom Hardy reprises his role as Venom/Eddie Brock, and he’s on the run in this final installment of the trilogy. Writer/director Kelly Marcel co-wrote earlier Venom movies, and previously adapted the screenplay for Fifty Shades of Grey.
White: “Tom Hardy, he returns as Eddie, the journalist who is now a fugitive. He's wrongly accused of murder. He is also Venom, a super alien symbiote id that lives inside of him, and takes shape and … gets him into scrapes, out of scrapes in a series of outlandish set pieces. They're clinging to the outside of airplanes. They're turning into a super horse to outrun bad monsters. … Then they wind up in area 51 because there's research of some sort happening and more bad people who want to disrupt the research.
… Look, I would apologize to comic book purists about my handling of this explanation, but I do not care, and it would appear that neither do the filmmakers. This is a sensation-based film. It does not take itself seriously. It asks you not to do so either. … It's quite bad, but it is loud and silly, and there's some disco dancing in the middle of it.”
Duralde: “This movie becomes so disinterested in its own story that it's almost experimental, like it literally just comes down to blobs of color and explosions and big shocking sounds. The movie could not care less. And that makes it unique in that so many bad movies now feel like the product of committees, and a lot of studio notes. And this one, it just feels like no one is bothering. … This is nonsense, but I can't hate it. I just stand back in slack-jawed awe that anyone let it happen.”
Conclave
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow, this is about the secret Vatican meeting to select a new pope. It’s adapted from the book by Robert Harris, a writer of popular historical fiction.
Duralde: “This movie is constantly zinging you with ‘uh oh, wait a minute, and here's the thing, oh and here's a twist, oh and here's some backstabbing.’ It's a lot of political conniving and backroom deal-making, and it really revels in the pageantry of Catholicism. … It is a handsomely-mounted production with a lot of fun performances from A-list actors. And it does have some political content. Sure, it is about an election. It is about factions and rivalries. But it’s a classy pot boiler.”
White: “I like a good, tense narrative of treachery and backstabbing, and this is definitely one. The performances are good. … The production values are … luxurious. And the script really pops with moments of great priest gossip and side eye and shade.”
New Wave
This documentary covers the refugee experience and Vietnamese American new wave music artists in the 1980s.
White: “Elizabeth Ai’s great-grandparents fled China, and then her grandparents had to leave Vietnam during the war. So she was raised in Southern California, mostly by an aunt, while her mother was out trying to make ends meet, take care of the extended relatives by opening a bunch of nail salons. So Elizabeth felt lost, and the question that she poses in the film was: Are we Vietnamese, or are we Americans? And like a lot of kids who feel disconnected in the world, she found music, but not traditional Vietnamese music. She found a very specific subset of new wave pop music … [and] in most other countries [was] known as Eurodisco. So think ‘You Spin Me Round’ by Dead or Alive, and you'll be in the ballpark. But this particular offshoot of new wave was performed by Vietnamese artists, the most popular of whom was — is still a singer named Lynda Trang Đài. They called her the Vietnamese Madonna because she had an intentionally sexy stage persona.
… One of the wonderful things that comes from films like this for viewers who might not have any relationship to the subject matter is its deep specificity, and that always winds up resonating universally. This is a story ultimately about people needing something outside of themselves to get by, and finding it and then letting it guide them to where they need to go. It's a wonderful documentary.”
Duralde: “I think Elizabeth Ai is tackling several things that can be really tricky for a documentary. She is looking at a cultural movement, but also making it very much a personal story and about her own … evolution, with the backdrop of this larger cultural matter going on. … It's a children of immigrants narrative, but more specifically, a children of refugees narrative. And so, they talk about this is a generation of adults with undiagnosed PTSD, and how their children then coped with those parents and this new land and new culture. And, yeah, I was riveted.”
More: Vietnamese new wave is armor for refugees to hide behind, says filmmaker
No One Asked You
This documentary follows comedians and activists on a road trip — led by the co-creator of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead — advocating for abortion rights.
Duralde: “Lizz Winstead has been very involved in the pro-choice movement. This movie is set in the years leading up to and including the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. So she takes us to clinics, she introduces us to providers. … You see her having these seminars to get people to talk about abortion in a way that is treating it like any other medical procedure and not being afraid of the word abortion. … It's dispiriting … to see the slow, inexorable move towards what would happen to Roe v. Wade. But I think it's also inspiring and hopeful that there's always going to be this voice of revolution, this voice of dissent. And with an election coming up, I think it's a potent reminder of how important our individual voices are, and how we can't give into despair, even when it seems like the status quo is crushing us.”
White: “What I admire most about this is its commitment to something more than just the film equivalent of doomscrolling. It is a rallying point for the audience to work in their own communities, to fight this theocratic takeover that's been slowly building since the 1980s. I was a very young Baptist in Texas back then, and I remember the anti-abortion fervor gaining traction and not losing steam at all. So if you're feeling defeated about this issue and all the other ones affecting people in real-life ways … watch it.”