Kevin Iannucci, Kaitlin Olson, James Day Keith, Madison Tevlin, Cheech Marin and Woody Harrelson in “Champions” (Photo by Shauna Townley/Focus Features)
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Iowa city of Des Moines and in Winnipeg, Canada, the comedy film “Champions” (a remake of the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A problematic basketball coach, who was recently fired from a minor league team, takes on coaching duties for a group of young adults who aspire to compete in the Special Olympics.
Culture Audience: “Champions” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Woody Harrelson, director Bobby Farrelly and formulaic comedies that aren’t very funny.
Alex Hintz, Casey Metcalfe, Matthew von der Ahe, Ashton Gunning, Tom Sinclair, Joshua Felder, James Day Keith, Madison Tevlin, Kevin Iannucci and Bradley Edens in “Champions” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)
The intentions might have been good, but “Champions” is mostly cringeworthy comedy about a grouchy coach and his basketball players, who aspire to compete in the Special Olympics. This misguided movie is an awkward mixture of sappiness, crudeness, bad jokes, and negative stereotypes. To put it bluntly: “Champions” is not a movie that can be considered a worthy showcase for people with various disabilities. Most of the movie is just downright embarrassing for everyone involved.
Directed by Bobby Farrelly and written by Mark Rizzo, “Champions” is yet another “underdog team” sports movie, where the coach (usually middle-aged, usually cynical) is hoping for a personal and professional comeback/redemption by coaching a group of misfits (usually young, usually unruly) who are on a losing streak. “Champions” is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones,” and it’s another example of a Hollywood remake that is inferior to the original movie. A remake is supposed to be a chance to improve on the original movie. In that regard, “Champions” is an utter failure.
In “Champions” (which takes place mostly in Des Moines, Iowa), the jaded coach is Marcus Markovich (played by Woody Harrelson), who gets fired from his job as an assistant basketball coach for a minor league team called the Iowa Stallions. Marcus was ousted from the team for instigating a physical altercation during a game with head coach Phil Perretti (played by Ernie Hudson), because Marcus disagreed with a game strategy that Phil wanted. Marcus was also recently arrested for crashing his car into a police car while Marcus was drunk.
In other words, Marcus (who wants to eventually become a National Basketball Association coach) has a bad temper, and he’s a screw-up. In court for the drunken car crash, Judge Mary Menendez (played by Alex Castillo) sentences Marcus to 90 days of community service. As part of his community service, he’s ordered to work at a non-profit community recreation center, which just so happens to have a group of young adults with “intellectual disabilities” who need a coach for their basketball team. In front of the judge—and to the embarrassment of Marcus’ attorney Charlie McGurk (played by Mike Smith)—Marcus calls these disabled people the “r” word.
And so begins the predictable journey of Marcus trying to train this team into going from a losing streak to achieving the goal of competing in the upcoming Special Olympics, which will take place in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. (“Champions” was actually filmed in Winnipeg.) Marcus gets some coaching help from an acquaintance named Sonny (played by Matt Cook), who has NBA connections. This basketball program is overseen by recreation center manager Julio (played by Cheech Marin), who is as reliable and even-tempered as Marcus is unpredictable and a loose cannon. Julio tells Marcus, “They don’t have to be champs. You just have to make them feel like a team.”
The team that Marcus coaches is called the Friends. The team member who gets the most screen time and personal backstory is Johnathan (played by Kevin Iannucci), nicknamed Johnny, who is living with Down syndrome. In the beginning of the movie, Johnny is afraid of taking baths or showers. Guess who’s going to help Johnny overcome this fear? The movie’s jokes and gags about Johnny’s body odor get tiresome very quickly. Johnny works at an animal shelter, so the movie can have some contrived cutesy moments with pet animals.
Also on the team is Benny (played by James Day Keith), who lives on his own and works in a restaurant that’s owned by a jerk named Frank O’Connolly (played by Sean Cullen), who is corrupt and a bigot. Another member of the Friends is Marlon (played by Casey Metcalfe), who is color blind and appears to be an idiot savant, because he rattles off encylopedic trivia and facts about various things. Cody (played by Ashton Gunning), who has multicolored hair, works at a dye factory, is a part-time musician as a guitarist in a rock band, and has to let everyone know repeatedly that he has an active sex life that includes threesomes.
Darius (played by Joshua Felder) doesn’t want to be a part of the team at first, but he eventually changes his mind. Cosentino (played by Madison Tevlin) is the team’s token female. Showtime (played by Bradley Edens) is the team’s tallest member. Craig (played by Matthew von der Ahe) is a welder in a vocational school. The other members of the team are Arthur (played by Alex Hintz) and Blair (played by Tom Sinclair), who are mostly overshadowed by the louder and more extroverted members of the team.
And it wouldn’t be a formulaic movie about a hardened sports coach who finds his soft and sensitive side without the coach having a love interest. In this case, her name is Alex (played by Kaitlin Olson), who is in the movie’s first scene, which shows Alex and Marcus the morning after they had a drunken hookup. Alex (who is sarcastic and sassy) starts off thinking that Marcus is just a meaningless one-night stand. But, of course, their relationship turns out to be something more, especially after it’s revealed how Alex has a personal connection to someone on the Friends team.
“Champions” has some entertaining basketball scenes and good comedic timing from the more experienced cast members. But the movie is a huge letdown in the way that the team members are often written as buffoonish stereotypes. And almost all of the movie’s jokes (for people with or without disabilities) are irredeemably awful. For “Champions,” the real losers are viewers who lost any time or money by watching this messy and very unfunny film.
Focus Features will release “Champions” in U.S. cinemas on March 10, 2023.
Some language in German and Russian with no subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place mostly somewhere off the coast of Greece, the comedy/drama film “Triangle of Sadness” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one black person and one Filipina) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A dating couple, who are both young fashion models, must navigate conflicts over gender roles in their relationship, which is put to the test when they end up stranded on an island with other people from a luxury cruise yacht.
Culture Audience: “Triangle of Sadness” will appeal primarily to people interested in a story that lampoons how youth, good looks, gender and wealth are used in social climbing and perceived power.
Arvin Kananian and Woody Harrelson in “Triangle of Sadness” (Photo by Fredrik Wenzel/Neon)
The darkly comedic “Triangle of Sadness” is an incisive satire of social class prejudices and gender-based power dynamics. The cast members’ skillful performances outweigh the movie’s flaws, such as a story that sometimes rambles and has a vague ending. “Triangle of Sadness” tells a memorable if uneven story about how constructs of power are frequently built around superficial qualities such as physical looks, youth and wealth, and how those constructs can radically change in life-or-death situations.
Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness” is a movie that is meant to make audiences laugh at uncomfortable truths and near-parodies of how people conduct themselves when they are in the presence of wealth and power—and what people are willing to do to have wealth and power. “Triangle of Sadness” had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in France, where it won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. The movie also made the rounds at other film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest and the New York Film Festival.
“Triangle of Sadness” is told in three separate parts. “Part One: Carl and Yaya,” “Part Two: The Yacht” and “Part Three: The Island.” The first two parts of the movie are really just introductions to the various people who end up stranded on an island off of the coast of Greece, after a yachting disaster. The last part of the movie is the most intriguing part, but it’s also the part of the movie that will be the most frustrating to viewers.
“Part One: Carl and Yaya” shows the relationship of the London-based couple at the center of the story: Carl (played by Harris Dickinson) is British, in his mid-20s and is a former mechanic who now works as a fashion model. Yaya (played by Charlbi Dean) is originally from South Africa, in her early 30s, and is also a fashion model. Carl and Yaya have been dating each other for less than a year. (Tragically, Dean died on August 29, 2022, of septicemia, the medical term for blood poisoning, which came from an untreated lung infection. She was 32.)
Carl is first seen during a casting call audition for a runway show. He and other male models, who are all shirtless, are being interviewed by a flamboyant social media personality named Lewis (played by Tobias Thorwid), who openly flirts with the models. Lewis asks Carl and the other models to show the different facial expressions that they use for haute couture modeling (a serious face) and commercial mass merchant modeling (a smiling face).
When Lewis yells out “Balenciaga,” Carl and the other models put on their serious faces. When Lewis yells out “H&M,” Carl and the other models put on their smiling faces. Lewis keeps repeating “Balenciaga” and “H&M,” and the models keep changing their facial expressions, like they’re robots being ordered to do someone’s bidding. It’s the movie’s way of showing how models are often treated like robots.
When it’s Carl’s turn to go in front of the judging panel, a snooty male casting agent comments to Carl about the middle of Carl’s forehead: “Can you relax your triangle of sadness?” In the production notes for “Triangle of Sadness,” writer/director Östlund comments on why he chose this phrase as the title of the movie.
“It’s a term used in the beauty industry,” Östlund says. “A friend sat next to a plastic surgeon at a party and, after a quick look at her face, he said, ‘Oh, you have a quite deep triangle of sadness… but I can fix that with Botox in 15 minutes.’ He was referring to a wrinkle between her eyebrows. In Swedish, it’s called ‘trouble wrinkle,’ and it suggests you’ve had a lot of struggles in your life. I thought it said something about our era’s obsession with looks and that inner well-being is, in some respects, secondary.”
It’s no coincidence that the central couple in this movie are models in the fashion industry, which places a high value on youth and outer beauty. Modeling is one of the few jobs where women make more money than men. And because Yaya’s income is much higher than Carl’s income, this disparity has caused some problems in their relationship.
The problems become evident when Carl and Yaya have what is supposed to be a romantic dinner at a restaurant, but this date devolves into an argument over who is going to pay for the dinner. Carl has flown out to visit Yaya, who’s on a modeling assignment. And he’s been consistently paying for their meals during this trip.
But at this particular dinner, Yaya had offered to pay, and Carl accepted the offer. When the bill is placed on the table, Yaya pretends that she doesn’t see it and silently puts the responsibility on Carl to pay the bill. When he reminds her that she offered to pay for the dinner, it leads to a disagreement that isn’t really about the bill about it’s about power and control in the relationship.
Carl says that if women want equality, they should be willing to pay for dates on occasion if they offer to do so. Yaya agrees to pay for dinner. Carl concedes that he didn’t mean to raise his voice with Yaya and tells her, “Now, I feel bad.” However, Yaya gives a passive-aggresssive insult to Carl when she tells him, “It’s okay. I make more money than you.”
And then, it’s Yaya’s turn to be embarrassed. The credit card that she uses to pay for the dinner is declined. And so, Carl ends up paying for the dinner in cash. On the cab drive back to their hotel, Carl wants to talk about this money issue, but Yaya doesn’t. She tells Carl: “It’s not sexy to talk about money.”
Carl replies, “We shouldn’t slip into the same gender-based roles everyone else seems to be doing. I want us to be equal.” Carl won’t let the issue go, and he confronts Yaya about something that he saw her do at the restaurant: She took a €50 bill that was meant for the dinner payment, and she kept it for herself.
It leads to an even bigger verbal blow-up between the couple, who end up shouting at each other in the hotel elevator. Eventually, Carl and Yaya call a truce, but they both know that the argument isn’t about the money for that dinner. Yaya admits that she’s materialistic and says that one of the reasons why she became a model was to become “someone’s trophy wife.”
Yaya also confesses that she purposely ignored the restaurant bill when it was placed on the table because she really wanted Carl to offer to pay for dinner. Yaya tells Carl, “I need to know that if I fall pregnant that the person I’m with will take care of me.” All of these comments are Yaya’s obvious ways of telling Carl that if he eventually doesn’t make more money than she does, she’s going to lose interest in him.
In the “Triangle of Sadness” production notes, Östlund says that this argument over who would pay for dinner happened in real life with him and his fashion photographer wife, Sina, before they were married. Ruben and Sina Östlund might have had a happy ending after this argument, but things are much rockier for Carl and Yaya. The first part of the movie is focused on this argument as a foreshadowing of some turmoil to come.
In “Part Two: The Yacht,” Carl and Yaya have been invited by one of Yaya’s fashion connections to go on a luxury cruise on a yacht. Yaya is a social media influencer, who makes money by endorsing products and services on her social media accounts. During this trip, she fulfills these sponsor obligations by posing for photos on the yacht, with Carl as her photographer.
This part of the movie introduces several other people on the yacht and puts further emphasis on the social class divisions that separate the yacht’s subservient workers and the yacht’s privileged passengers. Carl and Yaya eventually meet several of these other passengers, some of whom are quirkier than others. Carl comes from a working-class background, and he often feels like he doesn’t quit fit in with these people who are accustomed to being rich.
Not long after their yacht trip begins, Carl and Yaya meet Dimitry (played by Zlatko Burić), a Russian agriculture mogul who made his fortune from selling fertilizer. Dimitry is on this yacht with his snobby and demanding wife Vera (played by Sunnyi Melles) and his mistress Ludmilla (played by Carolina Gynning), who is young enough to be his daughter. Dimitry and Vera seem to have an open marriage, because Vera and Ludmilla know about each other and hang out together with Dimitry on the yacht. Dimitry likes to brag to other people about how he became wealthy in a “rags to riches” story, but there’s a nouveau-riche crudeness in the way that Dimitry talks and acts.
An elderly British married couple named Winston (played by Oliver Ford Davies) and Clementine (played by Amanda Walker) are very polite and proper, but viewers might perceive these seemingly harmless senior citizens differently when it’s revealed why these spouses are rich. Another couple on the yacht are German spouses Uli (played by Ralph Schicha) and Therese (played by Iris Berben), who uses a wheelchair because she had a stroke. Uli is very attentive and devoted to Therese, who is mostly mute, except for when she utters the only words that she seems capable of saying: “in de wolken,” which is German for “in the clouds.”
Later in the movie, Yaya and Ludmilla meet a lonely, rich bachelor named Jarmo (played by Henrik Dorsin) at the yacht’s main bar. Jarmo invited a woman to be his companion on this trip, but she stood him up for this date. Jarmo wants to show this woman that he’s having a good time without her, so he asks Yaya to take a photo of him at the bar, because he wants to send the photo to the woman who snubbed him.
When Yaya and Ludmilla hear Jarmo’s story about the woman who rejected him, they both offer to take a selfie photo with Jarmo, so that Jarmo can send a picture looking like he’s having fun with two beautiful women on this yacht. Jarmo is so grateful, he immediately tells Yaya and Ludmilla, “I’m very rich,” and he offers to buy Rolex watches for Yaya and Ludmilla as thank you gifts. They both decline the offer, but it’s an example of Jarmo’s insecurity in thinking that he has to tell people that he’s rich, in order to impress people and buy friendships.
The yacht’s workers include a perky yet no-nonsense staff director named Paula (played by Vicki Berlin), who is a combination of a task master and a cheerleader for the employees. Paula is fanatical about the ship remaining tidy and orderly, and she tells the staffers to say yes to anything that the passengers ask them to do. Paula also leads the employees in pep talks and group chants to build team solidarity and loyalty.
Two other yacht staffers are a maid named Abigail (played by Dolly de Leon) and a repairman named Nelson (played by Jean-Christophe Folly), who are mostly in the background during “Part Two: The Yacht,” but their personalities emerge during “Part Three: The Island.” Abigail and Nelson are two of the few people of color who work on the ship, and they are both given jobs where they don’t interact much with the passengers. Observant viewers will notice that on this yacht, only white employees have the jobs that require the most interaction with the passengers.
The movie shows an example of how far Paula wants her employees to go to please the wealthy passengers on the yacht. A young and relatively new employee named Alicia (played by Alicia Ericksson) is asked by Vera to go for a dip in a jacuzzi with her, while Alicia is on duty. Alicia is reluctant to do so, but she also remembers that Paula ordered the staff to always say yes to a passenger’s request, no matter how unusual or difficult the request is.
Alicia doesn’t have a swimsuit with her at that moment, but Vera says that Alicia can strip down to her underwear. Vera can see that Alicia is uncomfortable, but Vera doesn’t seem to care. Eventually, Alicia obliges this request. But when Paula hears how reluctant Alicia was to say yes to this request, Paula overcompensates by ordering the entire staff to go on the water slides with the passengers.
The yacht’s leader is Captain Thomas Smith (played by Woody Harrelson), who is a drunken mess. In the “Triangle of Sadness” production notes, Östlund describes the captain as “an idealist, an alcoholic and a Marxist.” Paula and the ship’s first mate Darius (played by Arvin Kananian) spend considerable effort trying to get the intoxicated Captain Smith out of his room in time for the captain’s dinner with the yacht’s most influential and richest passengers.
It’s at this dinner when all hell breaks loose. Something causes the passengers to get sick and violently vomit. Things get worse when the yacht explodes and not everyone makes it out alive. It’s enough to say that the people who do survive end up stranded on a remote island. (This isn’t spoiler information because it’s in the movie’s trailer.)
Being stranded on this island strips away a lot of the social hierarchies and perceptions of power that existed on the yacht. This third and final part of the movie has some twists and turns that make “Triangle of Sadness” worth watching. However, because this major shift in the story comes so late in the movie, much of it feels crammed-in and rushed.
With a total running time 149 minutes, “Triangle of Sadness” could have used tighter film editing. The movie took a little too much time with “Part Two: The Yacht,” which is a bit repetitive in showing how these vacationers take their privilege and social status for granted. “Part Three: The Island” also has some scenes that wander, although the scenes in the last third of the movie have more of an overall purpose. Despite these imperfections in the movie’s film editing, the dialogue in “Triangle of Sadness” remains sharp and engaging.
Dickinson and de Leon give the movie’s standout performances as Carl and Abigail. On the surface, Carl and Abigail both seem to have very little in common. But beneath the surface, they both have something big in common: They feel like underappreciated outsiders in their own worlds. And they both show some rebellion and resentment as a result of feeling like they have been denied access to things that they think they deserve.
The very last image in “Triangle of Sadness” can be interpreted in many different ways—and that open-endedness at the movie’s conclusion will either frustrate some viewers, or it will invite viewers to come up with theories about what really happened at the end of this story. Despite this ambiguous ending, “Triangle of Sadness” has a lot of interesting commentary and observations about why society’s divisions between the “haves” and “have nots” can affect how people treat each other—and how these divisions are often based on shallow criteria that do not truly reflect someone’s inner character.
Neon released “Triangle of Sadness” in select U.S. cinemas on October 7, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in San Francisco, the superhero action film “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Venom, the demonic alien anti-hero that inhabits the body of journalist Eddie Brock, does battle against a similar creature called Carnage, which inhabits the body of convicted serial killer Cletus Kasady.
Culture Audience: Besides appealing to the obvious target audience of comic book movie fans, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” will appeal primarily to fans of star Tom Hardy and people who like silly, over-the-top and predictable action movies.
Carnage (pictured at left) in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures)
The good news is that “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” isn’t as wildly uneven as its predecessor, 2018’s “Venom.” The bad news is that it’s consistently stupid in its campiness and appalling lack of originality. It’s very obvious that the filmmakers of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” have a “go for broke” attitude about leaning into the unintentional comedy that “Venom” got a lot of criticism for by fans and critics
The prevailing attitude in “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” (directed by Andy Serkis and written by Kelly Marcel) seems to be: “You laughed at ‘Venom.’ Now, we’re going to be in on the joke and tell the joke so you can laugh with us, not at us.” And there’s nothing wrong with turning this Marvel Comics movie franchise into a quasi-superhero satire or parody. The problem is that “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” doesn’t have an interesting or imaginative story.
Marcel and “Venom” movie franchise star Tom Hardy are credited with coming up with the “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” story that serves as the basis for the movie’s screenplay. Marcel was a co-writer of the 2018 “Venom” movie, which was directed by Ruben Fleischer, who failed to have a consistent tone for the film. In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” Marcel is the only credited screenwriter. She also wrote the 2015 movie “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which means that she has a track record for churning out terrible movies that are ripe for parody.
Every single thing that happens in “Venom” is tiresome and predictable. And the “jokes” are very stale and unimaginative. The visual effects are bombastic and sometimes cheap-looking. And the movie is so enamored with its own bad taste that it keeps going back to the same gags over and over. There’s a recurring joke about chickens that gets tiresome very quickly. Another joke involving a clerk at a convenience store is over-used to the point of boredom.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is also a uselessly blaring action movie that wants to pretend that being unnecessarily noisy in certain scenes means that it’s somehow proving its worth as an action movie. Loud action scenes are expected in a movie like this one, but there’s too much shouting by people in the non-action scenes. And there’s a character who literally causes tornado-like damage when she shrieks like a banshee.
In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which takes place in San Francisco, investigative journalist Eddie Brock (played by Hardy) is still struggling with the knowledge that he has a human-eating demonic alien living inside of him called Venom. Eddie can usually control Venom by deciding when Venom can appear outside Eddie body. However, when Venom gets too hungry or too angry (which happens a lot), Venom can act of his own free will, which usually involves the destruction of things or people.
Just like in the first “Venom” movie, expect to see Eddie having numerous arguments with Venom. Because people can’t see Venom when Venom is inside Eddie’s body, it often looks like Eddie is talking to himself when he’s really talking to Venom. In the real world, this unhinged persona would have serious consequences on his career as a journalist, since people would question Eddie’s mental health and the ability to do his job well. But since this is a comic book movie, viewers are expected to go along with this unrealistic aspect of the story.
Venom constantly craves human flesh, and Eddie will only allow Venom to eat criminals. Eddie hasn’t encountered any criminals lately, so he’s been feeding a steady diet of live chickens to Venom. In the movie, Venom constantly complains about being tired of eating chickens. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” keeps going back to this questionable well of jokes until it runs dry and becomes cracked to the point of irritation.
Every superhero movie has a villain. In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” the chief villain is Cletus Kasady (played by Woody Harrelson), a convicted serial killer who is awaiting his sentencing while he’s in prison. Law enforcement officials think that Cletus has killed more people than has been proven in court, and they want Cletus to tell them where the bodies are before he gets sentenced. In the media and in the public, people have been speculating if Cletus will get the death penalty or not.
Eddie is doing a story on Cletus, so he goes to the prison to interview him multiple times. Cletus doesn’t give Eddie any useful information, but he does get angry during one of the interviews and bites Eddie hard enough to draw blood. Cletus immediately notices that Eddie’s blood doesn’t taste completely human.
And you know what that means: Cletus has been infected with the same DNA that Venom has. And so, red-haired Cletus finds out that he has a red demonic alien inside of him. That creature is called Carnage. You can do a countdown to the inevitable battle scene between Venom and Carnage toward the end of the film.
In the meantime, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” has some filler scenes involving Eddie’s love life. In “Venom” (mild spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie), Eddie was engaged to district attorney Anne Weying (played by Michelle Williams), but she broke up with him at the end of the movie. Anne became so disillusioned with law enforcement after her experiences with Eddie/Venom, she left the district attorney’s office and began working in the non-profit sector.
In “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” Eddie is still nursing a broken heart about Anne, who wants to be on friendly terms with Eddie. They meet for dinner, where she tells him that she’s now engaged to be married to another man. His name is Dr. Dan Lewis (played by Reid Scott), who’s somewhat wimpy and gets nervous easily. He’s exactly the type of person you know is going to get stuck in some battle scenes later in the movie.
Cletus has his own lovelorn woes. In the 1996 flashback scene in the beginning of the movie, it’s shown that teenage Cletus (played by Jack Bandeira), who was a problem child from an abusive home, was sent to live at the co-ed St. Estes Reform School. At the reform school, Cletus met and fell in love with another student named Frances Barrison (played by Olumide Olorunfemi), who is nicknamed Shriek because whenever she gets upset, she shrieks loud enough to cause unnatural destruction. During their romance, Cletus gives Frances a ring and calls her “my angel.”
However, the destruction that Frances has caused is enough to get her sent away to a psychiatric institution for criminals. Cletus is distraught over this separation. Before Frances leaves, he tells her, “They can’t take you away from me! You’re my one bright light!”
In the police van that is transporting Frances to the psychiatric institution, she is being guarded by a young cop with the name tag P. Mulligan (played by Sean Delaney), who foolishly doesn’t have a partner with him as backup. It wouldn’t matter much anyway, because Frances does her shrieking with such force that it causes the the van to crash, and she escapes.
This movie is so sloppily written that it’s mentioned later in the story that most people who knew Frances believe that she is dead, even though her body was never found. It would make more sense to have her described as a missing person. But then again, if Cletus thought she was missing and not dead, he wouldn’t be so heartbroken.
Frances is really alive, of course. As an adult (played by Naomie Harris), she’s being secretly held captive by the government for experiments. Frances is deliberately mute while in captivity, but there comes a point in the movie where she finally does talk. Not that it makes much of a difference, because the dialogue she’s given is absolutely idiotic and forgettable.
Eddie lives near a convenience store. And for some weird reason, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” wants to make the convenience store’s owner/sales clerk Mrs. Chen (played by Peggy Lu), who had a cameo in the first “Venom” movie, into some kind of wisecracking foil to Eddie/Venom, similar to Ken Jeong’s Mr. Chow character in “The Hangover” movies. However, the “jokes” that Mrs. Chen utters just aren’t very good. Everything about the “comedy” in this movie is extremely simple-minded, like something you might see in a children’s cartoon, not a live-action superhero movie where adults are the majority of the audience.
The rest of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” plays out exactly like you’d expect it to play out, because it does exactly what many other mediocre-to-bad supermovies have already done in the story arc and battle scenes. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” is like the 2018 “Venom” movie on meth: It’s filled with the loud scatter-brained nonsense, gibberish dialogue and repetitive hyperactivity—resulting in one giant, annoying headache. The pace of the “Venom: There Will be Carnage” doesn’t drag like “Venom” did, but there’s no real suspense either.
Except for Harrelson, none of the actors seems to have any enthusiasm or genuine emotional connection to their roles. Maybe because it’s too hard to get excited when you have to say such moronic lines of dialogue. British actor Hardy (who’s a producer of the movie) looks like he’s going through the motions to collect his financial payout.
And even though Eddie is supposed to be American, Hardy’s natural British accent can occasionally be heard in the dialogue. Hardy has mastered American accents in several of his other movies where he portrayed an American. The fact that he has flaws in his American accent in this movie is an indication that he’s not artistically committed to the Eddie Brock/Venom role, and this “Venom” franchise is probably more about the money for him. Hardy and Williams still have no believable on-screen chemistry together, either as a couple, a former couple, or as friends.
The cop who was with Frances when she made her 1996 escape has now been promoted to detective. (His first name is not mentioned in the film.) Detective Mulligan (played by Stephen Graham) is as generic as generic can be. Detective Mulligan plays a fairly prominent role in the movie, which is so badly written that Detective Mulligan puts himself in many dangerous situations without having a cop partner as a backup. Keep in mind, this isn’t a small-town police force. This is supposed to be the San Francisco Police Department.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” does not have an end-credits scene, but there’s a mid-credits scene that suggests there will be a movie where Venom will eventually interact with Spider-Man, who is Venom’s nemesis in the Marvel comic books. It would be the first time that Venom and Spider-Man will be seen on screen together in a live-action movie. However, the tone of the “Spider-Man” movies (high-quality action) and the tone of “Venom” movies (low-quality schlock) are so vastly different from each other, it will be a challenge to bring Venom and Spider-Man together in live-action movies without sacrificing some credibility in trying to merge these two very different worlds.
It’s why the “Venom” movie franchise does a disservice to other Marvel Comics-based movies where there’s potential for Venom to cross over into these other Marvel movie franchises. The way that the filmmakers and film studios treat any Venom crossovers into other Marvel movies will be have to be treated just like chefs who have to prepare a meal with incompatible ingredients. Using that meal analogy, for people who want superhero movies that deliver an interesting and creative story, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Columbia Pictures will release “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” in U.S. cinemas on October 1, 2021.
Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern at the New York City press junket for “Wilson” (Photo by Carla Hay)
In the dark comedy “Wilson,” Woody Harrelson plays the neurotic title character, whose “no filter” approach to life can be offensive, amusing or both. Wilson, a divorced curmudgeon who lives alone, is still not quite over his ex-wife Pippi (played by Laura Dern), who left him nearly 17 years earlier and has her own personal issues, along with a big secret: After she left Wilson, she gave birth to their daughter, whom she put up for adoption. When Wilson discovers this secret, after he believed for years that the pregnancy had ended in abortion, he and Pippi have an awkward reunion, which leads to Wilson trying to make up for lost time with their daughter, Claire (played by Isabella Amara), who is a troubled teen outcast. Wilson and Pippi’s attempt to bond with Claire leads to dysfunctional family moments and bridges the gap for the former spouses to come to terms with their past. “Wilson” (directed by Craig Johnson) is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Daniel Clowes, who wrote the movie’s screenplay. Here is what Harrelson and Dern said when they say down for an interview with me and other journalists at the New York City press junket for “Wilson.”
“Wilson” has a mix of quirkiness and realism. Can you talk about that juxtaposition?
Dern: I think it’s a world we loved to find the tone—and obviously, carefully—but Daniel Clowes’ writing is so flawless in that way—and obviously, his artwork. So that as a template to invite you makes working with someone like Craig [Johnson] and someone like [cinematographer] Fred Elmes and his work, starting with David Lynch. We’ve worked with a lot of filmmakers and have similar journeys in that way. They expect us to make something authentic in a very boundry-less world. It’s a really fun playground, to say the least.
I think we all know that in the world of subversive comedy, you can see much more with deep poignancy than you might get away with another film tonally. So it’s gorgeous. A couple of journalists have quoted some of the things we [as Wilson and Pippi] say to each other. And as they say them, I almost get tears in my eyes, because it’s just so beautiful—the poetry of their longing to be seen and their love of each other and want to be parents and all of that. And it’s so touching because it’s irreverent-seeming.
Woody, is it fun to play someone with “no filter”?
Harrelson: I actually have less filter than I should, but playing him there really is no filter. I don’t think he’s a mean guy, but he’s a very honest guy who doesn’t know the repercussions of what he’s saying a lot of the time, and it comes out as harsh. I did notice that I was doing that quite a bit when we were shooting and even a little while after where I couldn’t shake it. I’d say, “Why did I say that?” And you could feel the uncomfortableness.
According to the production notes for “Wilson,” the set design for Wilson’s apartment included 4,000 books and about 35 crates of magazines. It’s symbolic of how he has a lot of emotional baggage. Is there anything you’ve personally collected that you can’t let go of easily?
Harrelson: I live in Maui now, but I have a place in L.A. My buddy Owen [Wilson] tells me I should be on an episode of “Celebrity Hoarders.” There are boxes everywhere. It really isn’t that I’m hoarding. It seems like it. But it’s that I have to go through and decide what to keep and what to throw away.
When I go on location, eventually everything that was on location ends up back there in the box. I don’t ever look in the box. Yeah, I think maybe I’m collecting too much stuff, and eventually my day will come when I can’t even walk in the house because I’ve just got to go through those damn boxes.
As actors, what have you learned about letting go of emotional baggage when you dive into a new role or a new character?
Dern: Maybe it’s being confronted with the fact that I should have been thinking about this a long time ago. He’s collecting boxes. I’m collecting parts of my personality that I’ve discovered playing some beautifully complicated people, but complicated nonetheless, so I go, “Oh, wow! Okay, I have to find the part of me that understands this, and then I keep that as a character trait.” So I think that I haven’t done any cleaning house. Maybe I’m just becoming more and more and more complicated because I like to collect all these people somewhere inside me.
Harrelson: Who’s the woman who has 16 personalities? Sybil. So you’re like the Sybil of actors. Sybil Dern. You’ve got all every character you’ve played in there ready to …
Dern: Ready to come out of me. [She laughs.]
Harrelson: Oh my God! What a thought!
So what kind of personality did you bring to Pippi?
Dern: Woody and I worked together years ago [in the 2005 movie “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio”], so my love of Woody, I’ve been carrying all along, and I would love to re-ignite it.
Harrelson:[He says jokingly] This could be the night!
Dern: In addition, I think one thing I felt from Daniel’s artwork and, of course, the script, is that I’ve always been interested in the question of voice. And certainly, as a female actor, that’s very interesting to me. But this idea that as fierce as she is and as in love as she is with someone who has no filter, I feel like in some ways it’s not that she’s trying to understand how to use her voice, but that she ever was even entitled to one in the first place.
And I think that’s why her rage is boiling over, because she’s never been seen or given space—by her family, by anyone, which is where addiction came into her life and now she’s back with the only person who ever gave her room to be all of herself and even loved her for it, which was probably terrifying to her. So that was the through line that was deeply interesting to me. And I think what Daniel intended, and we just tried it together, was to bring that to fruition and make sure that it had a beginning, middle and an end, in a way.
What do you think is the importance of struggle?
Harrelson: I don’t know anybody who’s a fan of struggle, but we all struggle in our way. All of us have our quirky little struggles. For a movie, it’s the drama in it that makes the comedy. If it wasn’t dramatic, it wouldn’t be comedic. All the shit that happens with us in this movie, and there’s some terrible stuff, physical violence and all these things go down, it’s struggle, but it’s funny. I’m fascinated by how the whole Buddhist thing where spiritual adepts who are able to take struggle and just flow with it and move through it and don’t even let it wound them emotionally.
Wilson can be considered a man-child. What do you think it means to be a grown-up? Aren’t we always learning?
Dern: I hope that is the case … anyone who wants to feel [their inner child] at 90. I was, thank God, raised by two people [actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd], who vowed to me to be children and said, “Hey, you’re going to teach us how to grow up, like we’re going to try to teach you, but we don’t have all the answers.”
So I feel very lucky to be raised by actors. People are always asking me about being raised by actors, and now we’re actors raising people, who are asking the same questions about us. I think part of it in their honesty and directness is that there is no pretending at a role of being the adult in the house or the adult in the relationship or whatever it is. May we all be all our fierce, child-like selves, to not ever look down on anyone else, as if we’ve figured anything out, but take this struggle and flow through it.
That’s the other thing I love about Wilson and Pippi. Daniel Clowes has created a world that’s not drugged. We go, “These people are impossible,” because they’re not medicated to be apathetic or medicated to be socially appropriate. But the world tells us, “You’re in struggle? You’ve gone through grief, loss, divorce? You know what? You need an antidepressant.” But if everyone is going through this, aren’t we supposed to be moving through this somehow? So I think the more we can allow our filter-less self to find some balance, we’re hopefully going to be a better civilization.
Can you talk about the physical comedy in “Wilson”?
Harrelson: I loved the slugfest that [Laura Dern and Cheryl Hines] had. I loved also that juxtaposed with me and [Isabella Amara] talking about the frog, just having that sweet talk.
Dern: We had so much fun in the mall, too, “beating” on those teenagers! We shot for a while. It was …
Harrelson: Very cathartic.
What can you say about any improvisation that you did for “Wilson”? Is it easier to improvise in a comedy like this one?
Harrelson: I always believe in some improv. It depends on the director. Some of them are not really into it. Even then, we try to, in a subtle way, insist on it. I do feel like there’s sometimes when you catch stuff from an improv—it’s not always right—but it’s more real, more honest. That moment just improved because of that. But [I’m] definitely embracing and getting back to my roots, which is comedy. I just got a little distracted by the drama. It’s so satisfying too because when we went to Sundance, just to hear that whole audience laughing, what a great feeling. You don’t always get that. A lot of movies, I’ve never seen with an audience. It’s a good feeling when you get that.
Dern: And when you capture a moment or a line, and it taps into the zeitgeist. I told Woody that one of my favorite things was my son and a few of his friends [quoting a line from “Wilson”].
How do you think “Wilson” reflects what’s happening in society now?
Dern: It is an incredible time to be playing these characters. It’s really interesting to consider people’s discomfort with the truth and people’s discomfort with a character who will get in their face and want to connect. And yet, there is comfort with con men. That’s really troubling. We’re culturally more comfortable with a lie that somehow we can hang our hope on, rather than the reality of where we are and what we need to do as a community to affect change. “There is no global warming” or “If we all make this an emergency and are in it together, we might actually do something.” Those are two different ways.
Somebody like Wilson would be in our face about it. Even if I have to be shamed, like if I’m at Disneyland throwing away my kids’ plastic drink, I want a Wilson to be like, “What the fuck are you doing? Put that in the recycling bin!” I like that. I don’t want a person to be like, “Ah, don’t worry about it. The more consumerism, the better.” So it’s how you want to live your life, but I think the more Wilsons we get, the better off we may be.
Harrelson: Wilson for President!
Do you think we need more people like Wilson in the world?
Harrelson: I think in politics, it would be nice, because you do get lied to quite a lot, and there does seem to be a certain degree of comfort with this lie. Most people don’t know that in Vietnam, we killed 2 million people—mostly civilians. In Korea, it was 4 million people. Where is our apology for that? Or for the millions of Native Americans when we first conquested this land. Or what we did, in terms of slavery. We built this country on the backs and the blood and the bones of so many dispossessed people. And we’re comfortable with the lie of this beautiful nation.
Well, let’s look at what the underbelly is. Let’s look at how it really formed. I do think we get comfortable with con men. Let’s face it: Politicians are businessmen working for bigger businessmen. And if you don’t have a lot of money, you’re not being represented. So the fact that there are all these people who think our president is representing the common man? I mean, come on!
Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson (pictured at left) in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson, Isabella Amana and Laura Dern in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson (pictured at right) and director Craig Johnson on the set of “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson (standing) in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson and Judy Greer in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Laura Dern and Woody Harrelson a in “Wilson” (Photo by Wilson Webb)
Woody Harrelson in “Wilson” (Photo by Kimberly Simms)
