Woman of the Hour: Anna Kendrick becomes the latest actor to dazzle with their directorial debut with the excellent true crime thriller Woman of the Hour. Told primarily in a non-linear fashion, the film focuses on how the paths of struggling Los Angeles-based actor Sheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick), prolific serial killer/rapist Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) and a woman named Laura (Nicolette Robinson) converged at a taping of an episode of The Dating Game in 1978 where Alcala-who was one of the three bachelors-was selected to go on a date with Bradshaw. While the frequent timeline shifts and script could've been a bit tighter, Kendrick is a total pro at promptly flipping the mood from playful to terrifying, the performances-particularly from an alternately charming and bone-chilling Zovatto-are terrific and the film makes potent points about the rampant misogyny woman face as they go through the world and how that ties into threats of or sometimes, actual violence against them. Woman of the Hour is easily in the upper echelon of films I've seen this year, and I can't wait to see where Kendrick goes as a filmmaker from here.
Grade: B+
Brothers: A large collection of gifted actors (Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Taylour Paige, Brendan Fraser, Marisa Tomei, the late M. Emmet Walsh) gathering together to star in a shitty R-rated comedy that's well beneath their talents? Welcome back to the early aughts everybody! Fraser and Tomei are the only ones who can come out of this wretched thing with their heads held highs as they're responsible for about 98% of the laughs (Brolin represents the other 2%, and those come in one scene with Tomei) that exist in this unrelentingly hacky but fortunately very brief crime comedy that makes last year's Strays look like the sophisticated laugh riot of the century. Its lifetime sentence to the bowels of the Prime Video library is more than deserved.
Grade: D+
Conclave: While I wasn't overly impressed by anything about Conclave other than the cinematography from Stephane Fontaine-which features some of the most natural-looking lighting choices I've seen in a movie in quite some time, it kind of rules that a catty, trashy Papal election thriller has a real chance of winning Best Picture this year. Conclave is full of the kind of non-stop ludicrous plot developments you'd find in a John Grisham paperback, but since they're presented in this elegant package by an Oscar-winning director in Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and a cast of proper thespians headed up by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Sergio Castellitto, it's being viewed as a high-end, topical political thriller by many people who would typically be repulsed by the idea of consuming such low art. Just a really masterful Trojan Horse job by everyone involved. Now, let's get this same group to remake Saltburn so the film can magically go from polarizing to beloved among critics.
Grade: B
Venom: The Last Dance: What makes Venom such a refreshing departure from every other modern superhero movie is its deep commitment to being zany and ridiculous. Even as trilogy ender The Last Dance flirts with setting up the Tom Hardy-less future of Sony's Spider-Man spin-off universe at times, it never loses sight of the shaggy, silly spirit that allowed it to find an engaged audience that the other SSMU entries mostly failed to. Hardy continues to have a total blast with the dual roles of Eddie Brock/Venom, the fugitive road trip plot gives way to some of the finest Venom hijinks of the franchise so far, and the film does the damn near impossible by making a big superhero CGI action clusterfuck finale a badass, heartfelt sendoff to its antihero/lovable doofus protagonist. The Last Dance comes awfully close to challenging Let There Be Carnage as my favorite Venom entry and it would be a slam dunk choice for the #1 slot if it didn't stumble out of the blocks a bit with its (necessary) set up of the Knull and Chiwetel Ejiofor/Juno Temple plotlines. It's a borderline miracle that something this uniquely silly got the opportunity to turn into a proper franchise and I can't thank Hardy and Kelly Marcel enough for making it happen.
Grade: B
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