Film Review: Venom (2018)

I wanted a movie that was going to cheer me up and I’m so glad I picked Venom. It’s honestly the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while and probably one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen. I only realised after I watched it that it didn’t get great reviews – well, SILLINESS. IGNORE THE BAD REVIEWS, THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME SAUCE AND A KETTLE OF FUN. Tom Hardy is good in literally everything (Virgin Queen, Peaky Blinders, The Dark Knight Rises, etc.) but as I don’t keep up with movies at all, I had no idea Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed were in it too! Great casting, great movie.

The film follows Eddie, a reporter who wants to hold bad guys accountable for their crimes and doesn’t hold back on his opinions of their awfulness. Unfortunately, being a good reporter and a good person doesn’t sit well with his bootlicker boss, and Eddie gets fired when he goes after a corrupt scientist, Carlton Drake, and asks him about the cover-ups of his company. To Eddie’s horror, the move also gets his fiancée Anne fired, too. Furious, Anne breaks up with him, and in one day Eddie loses his job, his love, his apartment and his cat. Poor, poor Eddie. 😥

Drake’s experiments continue when his company uncovers an alien ‘symbiote’ and tries to match it with various human hosts. Horrified by his methods, one of his scientists seeks out Eddie to expose the truth. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong, and the symbiote gets inside Eddie.

Cue, DRAMA AND ACTION.

Venom, the alien symbiote, is hilarious. (And he takes deep personal offence to being called a ‘parasite’ FYI.) He and Eddie are basically a sarcastic duo fused together. Like if Jekyll and Hyde could talk to each other and liked each other, but were constantly duking it out. I giggled throughout their ensuing escapades, fending off bad guys and trying to sort out their shenanigans of being stuck together. Eddie tries to keep Venom good, Venom struggles with listening, but he likes Eddie and comes around to the idea of fighting for the good side. Plus, Venom’s commentary of how awesome Eddie’s ex is, is so funny.

10/10, totes recommend, ignore the bad reviews, this movie is a m a z i n g.

Film Review: What Happened to Monday (2017)

movie review

What Happened to Monday, or Seven Sisters, was far from what I was expecting. Noomi Rapace is a treasure. It fits in well with Gattaca, Children of Men and V for Vendetta, my favourite dystopian films. This one is set in 2073 when the world population has grown to such a degree that there’s little food, little space and a lot of problems. To counter this, the Child Allocation Bureau is created to ensure that only one child is born to every couple. No siblings allowed. The leader of the organisation totes the idea that any additional children will be taken into custody and put into cyrosleep until the time comes that there’s more space, more food and fewer problems.

Creeped out yet?

When Terrence Settman’s daughter dies giving birth to seven identical daughters, he takes the extraordinary step of keeping them all in secret. He names them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each girl is allowed out of the house on their name-day under the singular identity of Karen Settman, their mother. For decades, the girls exist as one person in public, but flourish as unique individuals in private. Until Monday goes missing.

Very quickly, the sisters ban together to track down their missing sibling and figure out what happened.

The other characters are Nicolette Cayman, played by Glenn Close, and Adrian Knowles, played by Marwan Kenzari. Both work for the CAB, but have wildly different amounts of power and opinions on what they’re doing.

Let me just say that Noomi Rapace blew my mind in this. She played each of the seven sisters uniquely and it’s done so well. Marwan Kenzari was another standout and I really hope to see him in more things. He and Rapace had great chemistry. Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe are fabulous as ever and steal their scenes as much as Rapace and Kenzari. Honestly, these four really brought believability to their scenes.

There were some aspects of the film that I didn’t quite love, although they’re minor complaints: I feel like one character got away with a lot; I’m not sure how I felt about the ending, although I didn’t hate it; and Zaquia, a CAB agent portrayed by Cassie Clare, was somehow in dozens of scenes but rarely spoke, whilst her partner spoke quite a bit. It’s great that Rapace and Close got so much screen time, but I felt like Clare got left out a bit.

Overall, however, I think the film fits well into the dark dystopian genre and rivals Children of Men for gritty futuristic societies that deal with overpopulation as a plotline.

Recommended for fans of dystopian films.

 

**gifs found online, not mine