Spider-Man: No Way Home (no spoilers review)

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Jon Watts

Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Tony Revolori, JK Simmons.

The extra arms were handy for doing the housework.

Giving the fans what they want is a fraught exercise. Often in films, especially superhero movies, this kind of "fan service" is about stuffing the screen full of Easter eggs at the expense of story and character, and often to the detriment of the casual viewer. It's like the old adage about responsible government - don't give the people what they want, give them what they need.

So if a film can manage to not only meet the wild expectations of fans but exceed those expectations, while also giving them the good story and character arcs a good film needs, then that is truly something special. Marvel has done this before, most notably with Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. These high watermarks of the franchise stuffed countless beloved characters into a gripping storyline, all the while making sure they got those magical moments of "fan service".

Marvel has done it again with Spider-Man: No Way Home. The film stands on the shoulders of giants, but then somehow pulls the giants up with them. This is a herculean feat of fan service that works because it takes all the "wouldn't it be cool if this happened?" moments and fits them into a story with high stakes, powerful arcs, deep emotions, important lessons and wry humour.

Spider-Man AKA Peter Parker (Holland) finds his life in turmoil, thanks to tabloid media jerk Jonah J. Jameson (Simmons) revealing his secret identity. In desperation he turns to sorcerer Dr Strange (Cumberbatch) to work his magic and make people forget Peter Parker is Spider-Man. But in doing so, they open up doorways into the multiverse, sending Spidey-villains from other universes into Peter's world.

Spider-Man is one of the most beloved Marvel characters for many reasons, and the non-MCU Spidey films that have worked best (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Man and Into The Spider-Verse) have understood those reasons. More so than any other Marvel character, Spider-Man is born out of tragedy, defined by adversity, and constantly has to give up everything to make the world a better place. He's perpetually broke, unlucky in love, and struggles with the imbalances in his life in a way that feels real and relatable. He's always been the most human of the superhumans.

No Way Home gets this, just like Homecoming and Far From Home did. The film puts Spidey through the ringer, all the while cherishing what makes him unique and beloved. The film is full of pathos and heart, and isn't afraid to hit you in the feels hard. A lot of that comes down to Tom Holland's continual brilliance in the role, and a script that understands the legacy of the character and why he works. 

It does all this in the midst of some remarkable fan service. It serves up things you didn't even know you wanted as a Spidey-fan, on top of the stuff you did want. Its villains are enjoyable and the film doesn't suffer from having too many, even if some get little more than the most basic of motivations. The spectacle is on a huge scale, but still manages to keep the characters front and centre.

The Home trilogy is now complete, and leaves Peter Parker in a fascinating and very Peter Parker-esque place. There has been talk of another trilogy, with Holland continuing in the role. Who knows where the character would go next, but as far as Spidey films go, this seems unbeatable. 

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

(M) ★★½

Director: Andy Serkis.

Cast: Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams, Naomie Harris, Reid Scott, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu.

The battle for the chicken had begun.

This is damning it with faint praise, but at least this is better than the first Venom film.

In fact, this sequel to Sony's obvious attempt to milk it's Spider-verse cash cow is reasonably enjoyable in places. It fixes things that were broken in the first film (the tone, the script), and ensures what worked remains (Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock and his relationship with Venom).

But it's by no means a great movie. It feels padded and devoid of heart - it's a big, dumb, silly piece of fun and nothing more.

Brock is still a washed-up reporter, living an Odd Couple-style existence with the symbiote Venom, which continues to share Brock's body. But Brock's career looks to be on the up when Death Row serial killer Cletus Kassidy (Harrelson) picks Brock as the man to share his story with. Unfortunately, that spells bad news for Brock and the city of San Francisco.  

The muddled tone of the original is gone, and new director Serkis leans into the dark comedy that provided the better moments of the first film. While it's still bloodless, there's a darker vibe due to the big bad being a serial killer, as if the movie is slowly edging closer to a time when we can have an R-rated Venom film where heads are actually seen to be eaten. That this is all played for laughs is a relief after last time.

The comedy duo of Brock and Venom is entertaining, and Hardy once again gives his all for the underappreciated role. Harrelson is also wonderfully OTT, and the script attempts to give Kassidy a bit of depth, even if it's all done very simplistically, but at least they made the effort. 

However the film still can't shake the feeling that they don't totally know what to do with these characters. Venom is at his best when he's fighting Spider-Man, and until Sony gets their wish, they're treading water and re-running ideas from the first film - namely that it's symbiote-vs-symbiote, and that Brock and Venom have to get along because they're stronger when they work together.

The script feels padded given the story's simplicity, and could've been done in half the time, but at least the padding is more enjoyable than in the first film. There's some welcome humour that works better this time around, even if the script is still pretty silly (a clue is found carved into a tree for chrissake).

Given the comparative post-COVID success of this, a third film is inevitable. It's hard to see where they'll take the franchise, because it's already starting to feel tired. Sony is absolutely jockeying to get Venom into the MCU, so let's hope it doesn't drag that franchise down to the level of this one.

The Third Man (1949)

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Carol Reed.

Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Paul Hörbiger, Ernst Deutsch, Erich Ponto, Siegfried Breuer, Hedwig Bleibtreu, Bernard Lee, Wilfrid Hyde-White.

"I knew I should've turned left at Albuquerque."

Here's what I remember from my first viewing of The Third Man 20 years ago - the sewer chase finale, a stray light illuminating Harry Lime's face, the ferris wheel, and the cuckoo clock speech. Each of these moments features that titan of cinema, Orson Welles.

Rewatching Reed's classic noir, it's surprising how little screen time Welles has, but these remembrances illustrate how much he towers over the film. In less than 10 minutes he dominates proceedings enough to earn his sociopathic Lime spot #37 on the American Film Institute's list of cinema's greatest villains of all time. 

Obviously Welles is a major part of what makes The Third Man such a classic, not only of film noir, but of all film. Lime looms over the narrative just as the shadow of World War II looms over post-war Vienna in the film. If we'd finally met Lime after such a build up and he'd been anything less than Wellesian in his charismatic proportions, it would have undone so much great work. Welles fan and director Peter Bogdanovich also notes Welles' influence on Reed's direction, noting that "the look of The Third Man - and, in fact, the whole film - would be unthinkable without Citizen Kane, The Stranger and The Lady from Shanghai, all of which Orson made in the '40s, and all of which preceded The Third Man". And Welles wrote that pitch perfect cuckoo clock speech.

Of course, there is so much more to The Third Man than Welles - he's the slice of Lime in a gin and tonic, tying it all together, making it all work. To stretch this desperate metaphor to breaking point, the gin is Graham Greene's gripping noir storyline and Reed's use of German expressionism in his direction, while the tonic is the under-rated Cotten in a workmanlike performance, carrying the whole thing along.

Greene hung out in Vienna just three years after WWII ended, picking up stories of the black market and life in the city for his screenplay. Filming there adds so much veracity to Greene's story - the moral decay of Lime and his dubious cohorts is reflected in the destruction of the city. Where once stood beauty and some of humanity's finest achievements now lies rubble and ruin.

Reed, Aussie cinematographer Robert Krasker, and assistant director Guy Hamilton (who did four Bond films) use light and shadow brilliantly to ramp up the noirish tones, throwing in some ambitious-for-the-time Dutch angles to keep the viewer off kilter (The Best Years Of Our Lives director William Wyler famously sent his friend Reed a spirit level in response). These tasty tricks help put you in the shoes of Cotten's equally perplexed Holly Martins, the pulp western writer scrambling to find out what happened to his mate Harry. Cotten did some of his best work alongside his dear pal Welles, and this is among his finest. He makes Martins' an enchanting mix of brash American, clueless everyman, and desperate friend, and by film's end we feel his sense of betrayal and sadness.

Alida Valli and Trevor Howard are also great, as is Bernard Lee and indeed the remainder of the cast, who get to throw some neat gags in to break up the darkness. And when you add Anton Karas' jaunty yet haunting zither score, it rounds off a classic film without a weak spot.

The Third Man has earnt its rightful place as a British classic, though it's almost perceived to done this by accident. As Film Magazine noted while putting the movie at #26 on its 100 Greatest list, Reed "had to settle for Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles" instead of getting James Stewart and Noel Coward. Leslie Halliwell, writing in 1977, called its success "a lucky combination", while Barry Norman, in the process of dubbing it one of the 100 greatest films of all time in 1998, said that "on the face of it The Third Man should simply have come and gone, remembered - if at all - as simply another post-war thriller".

The director was also fighting with Greene over the ending - the writer wanted Holly and Anna to get together, but Reed disagreed. As Greene noted much later, Reed "has been proved triumphantly right", giving us one of the greatest downer finales in cinema, and capping off one of the best films of any generation. As William Bayer put it in his 1973 book The Great Movies, "The Third Man is a flawless film of intrigue and suspense, a summit of perfection within the genre... (it) may be the greatest (British) film since World War II". Bayer was correct nearly 50 years ago, and is still correct today.

The Beatles: Get Back

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Peter Jackson.

Take 413 of Maxwell's Silver Hammer was going surprisingly well.

Believe it or not, some people don't like The Beatles.

I've met some of these strange creatures in the wild and have found them contrary and confusing. Obviously this three-part documentary series is not for them.

But it's also hard to recommend this near-eight-hour-long doco to people with only a passing interest in the Fab Four. There are moments in parts one and two that had me looking at my watch, and I'm obsessed with The Beatles. But they pay off, if you're dedicated.

Obsession and dedication are what is needed to watch all of Get Back. Peter Jackson has made this to be as complete as possible while still making something watchable, fully aware this is could be the last time in a long time someone will get to sift through the 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio from the Let It Be sessions, as filmed in 1969 by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and his team.

With that once-in-a-lifetime shot in his hands, Jackson has ensured the series paints as complete a picture as possible, piling on the minutiae and fan service. For example, the mentions of manager Allen Klein are ominous, but offer no pay-off within the scope of the doco - it's only the die-hards who know where that goes - while the huge amounts of footage showing the band goofing their way through daft covers and silly jams that aren't album-worthy demonstrate where their heads are at musically, even though it often sounds terrible.

This completeness is both Get Back's biggest strength and weakness. It's fascinating and frustrating because for the first half, The Beatles are shit at rehearsing. The clock is ticking, but they dick around with half-arsed covers from their Hamburg days, or deliberately messing around with their own songs. No wonder George quit and Ringo looks bored out of his brain.  

But as infuriating as it is, it helps contextualise everything. By showing us so much, Jackson helps us understand everything better. George's departure makes more sense than it did in the original Let It Be doco, as does Paul's attitude, which is a mix of fearful indecision and reluctant leader. Yoko's presence is shown to be as benign as most intelligent people always thought it was, John's only as willing as his stonedness allows him to be, and Ringo is just Ringo. 

This excess of material also improves the pay-off of the rooftop concert. There's an incredible exultant joy that comes from watching their final gig after having seen them fumble their way through the previous few weeks. Seeing this historic moment in its entirety, from multiple angles simultaneously - including street level and the cops politely waiting in reception - is another example of Jackson giving us the full context, even though we see repeat performances of the same five songs.

Some favourite moments: the nonchalant way George quits, Paul's reaction to hearing Billy Preston jam with the band for the first time, Preston's incredible talents, seeing Get Back eke its way out of Paul's brain, the remembrances of India, the way they discuss Brian Epstein, Lindsay-Hogg's hilarious concert suggestions, and Paul's cheeky grin when the cops rock up at the rooftop gig.

Get Back is an exhaustive and occasionally exhausting look at The Greatest Band In The World that does something no other Beatles experience has ever done - it makes you feel like you're hanging out with the band. Unfiltered, honest and insightful, it sets the record straight and shows the Fab Four as just four very real humans who happened to make some incredible music together.

No Time To Die

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 12, 2021, and ABC Radio Central Victoria on November 15.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Billy Magnussen, Ana de Armas, David Dencik, Rory Kinnear, Dali Benssalah, Lisa-Dorah Sonnet.

"No time to die, but always time for a drink, am I right?"

I've always graded films on how well they meet their aspirations. Not every film is trying to be Citizen Kane or Lawrence Of Arabia, so the only accurate benchmark to measure a film against is how successfully it achieves what it is trying to achieve.

No Time To Die is trying to do a lot of things. It's trying to wrap up the Daniel Craig era of Bond, while also give Craig a fitting farewell that matches his brilliant entry to the franchise (Casino Royale, which is the best Bond film for my money). It's also trying to push the series into places its never been and continue its modernisation, while also maintaining the essential 007-ness of it all. And it wants to be a damned good Bond film.

No Time To Die is all those things. It achieves every goal, and does so with heart, grit, guts and the occasional wry smile. It's a continuation of the changes that have been evident in the series with every passing decade, but it's also exceedingly worthy of carrying the 007 licence. In short, this will go down as one of the best Bond films of all time.

It certainly carries one of the most Bond-worthy plots - the villainous Lyutsifer Safin (Malek) has taken control of a diabolical superweapon with the capacity to selectively wipe out anyone he wants, one family at a time. Naturally, it's up to Bond to stop him.

What's impressive about No Time To Die is the way it weaves this typical storyline among the threads of the connections Craig's Bond has made along the way. It ups the stakes like no 007 movie before - not just in a "I'm trying to take over the world!" megalomaniacal way, but in a personal way for Bond as well. It shows Bond in a new light, making him simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable than ever before.

Most of this comes down to the script, written by series regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, along with director Fukunaga, and polished by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But a lot of credit also has to go to Craig, who delivers the highs and lows beautifully. His light touch with humour along with his physicality and ruggedness have made him a great Bond, but its been his dramatic chops and emotional range that have set him apart, never more so than here. 

Fukunaga's cinematography is outstanding, the set pieces are brilliant, and the ending is to die for. The cast regulars such as Whishaw, Harris, Fiennes and Wright are great, and the returnees Seydoux and Waltz are also excellent, but its de Armas and Lynch that threaten to walk away with the movie, especially de Armas, who lights up a wonderful sequence set in Cuba. 

Series custodians Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have successful closed one Bond chapter and provided a blank slate for whoever is chosen to pick up the martini glass next. But whoever does so has some huge shoes to fill. No previous Bond has ever gone out on a high like this.

Eternals (no spoilers review)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 12, 2021.

(M) ★★★

Director: Chloé Zhao.

Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Salma Hayek, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Bill Skarsgård, David Kaye.

"How long do we have to pose like this?"

In the wake of its box office-breaking, era-ending Endgame, Marvel's subsequent fare has paled in comparison. 

That's not to say the post-Endgame films have been bad. Au contraire. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Widow and Shang Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings have all been great fun, with some strong highlights. But next to Endgame, they're small cheese.

Similarly, Eternals lives in the shadow of the great MCU films that have come before, and superhero fatigue is very real for many. Even the two-year-long COVID-enforced gap in releases hasn't eased this.

All of this is no fault of Zhao and her superb cast. Yes, Eternals has its flaws, but this film would have felt far more impressive five years ago. Now, it feels good without being great - an enjoyable but bloated push into Marvel's cosmic comics catalogue that lacks a truly fresh angle to make it stand out from the crowd beyond its very welcome representation.

For those who don't know their Celestials from their Deviants, the film deals with a team of superheroes - the Eternals - who are sent to Earth by the god-like Celestials to protect mankind from some weird beasties known as the Deviants.

With their job seemingly completed, the Eternals hang out on Earth for a few extra centuries, waiting for their next mission. But the Deviants have returned, and are far more powerful than our timeless heroes remember.

There are a lot of firsts for Marvel in this film. Across its wonderfully diverse cast, there is a differently abled hero, a gay hero, and plenty of ethnicities that have never seen themselves reflected back like this. Representation is important. If you think otherwise, you're probably white or stupid or both.

Naturally, the problems with the film are nothing to do with this. They stem from the difficult task of explaining the convoluted backstory behind these characters and their overlords - it's far easier by comparison to say "I got bit by a radioactive spider". But the film struggles to explain its exposition and so overcompensates. There's an opening crawl, then we see what's explained in that opening crawl actually happening. Then, when big reveals are revealed, things get explained again.

This would be a deal-breaker for a film that doesn't look as good as this, or that doesn't have such excellent depth and heart, or such a fascinating array of characters so well portrayed. As much as Eternals crawls in places and struggles under the weight of its exposition, these lulls are surrounded by shining character moments and great fun.

The theme of family (insert Fast & Furious joke here) is minor compared to what Eternals is trying to say about humanity itself. Characters go back and forth about whether mankind is worth saving, about whether the few must die so the many can live - the kinds of ideas that have kept philosophers awake at night for millennia and are fun to explore in a superhero blockbuster.

With 10 Eternals in play, the film gets plenty of opportunities to kick around these ideas, but its biggest strength is that each character and their perspective feels fully fleshed out and distinctive, beyond their colourful costumes and varied power sets. There are no weak links in the cast, but Henry, Jolie, Madden and Nanjiani really shine.

Zhao handles the action scenes nicely, making good shot choices to ensure the combat doesn't get lost in hard-to-follow close-ups and edits, and generally the film looks amazing. She also lets the character moments breathe amid the global carnage.

Eternals is not the home-run many had hoped it would be, but nor is it the disaster many are claiming. It's a slightly over-stuffed ensemble piece that delivers a wonderful array of cool characters and some much needed diversity in the superhero genre.

Ranking the Fantastic Four films

The Fantastic Four are Marvel's first family - 60 years ago, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created this super team and they became the foundations that the House of Ideas was built on.

Over the past six decades, the FF have been used to explore plenty of cosmic ideas, but at their core there has been several key themes, including family, discovery, the weight of greatness, and the cost that comes with trying to build a better tomorrow. With no secret identities to hide behind, the fascinating foursome have proven themselves to be incredibly human and very vulnerable over the years. This has helped them sell upwards of 150 million comics and made them among the most relatable characters in the Marvel canon.

Yet every time Marvel's first family is taken to the big screen, things have gone badly. An MCU-approved reboot is on the cards, but let's look back and laugh/cry/hurl at the mis-steps the FF have made over the years.

And here's a piece about all this that I wrote for the ABC.

1. Fantastic Four (2005) ★★★

Not as bad as you remember thanks to some spirited performances, strong casting, and a couple of cool sequences. Some of the special FX have aged as poorly as the overly sexualised nature of it all, but the general vibe is one of campy fun and half-decent reverence for the material. The characters are fairly comic-accurate (except for Dr Doom), and most of the tweaks work, broadly speaking. The prosthetics of The Thing are pretty great, and Michael Chiklis nails it as Ben Grimm, while Chris Evans has a field day as Johnny Storm. It's worth noting Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd are individually okay but together they're terrible, while Julian McMahon gives it his best shot at an underwritten Dr Doom. As an origin story, it's not bad, and some naff moments aside, it had the potential to launch a strong franchise.

2. Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007) ★★

A scattergun sequel that centres on the Coming of Galactus storyline, but forgets to bring the necessary dread or gravitas. Many comicbook fans were critical of Galactus being rewritten as a giant cloud instead of a massive planet-eating dude, but that's not the real problem here. Gruffudd and Alba still have all the chemistry of two bricks, and it's particularly telling when Evans and Alba demonstrate more spark... and they're playing brother and sister. But the story is the main issue. Dr Doom is resurrected with no explanation, and the film doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with him or Silver Surfer. Evans and Chiklis save the day, and there are some good laughs along the way, but the franchise feels tired, two films in.

3. Fantastic Four (2015) ★★

Read my full (and very generous) review here.

Once again, they nail the casting, but the script is a mess, perhaps because the studio was trying to save the film with re-shoots, edits, and no bloody idea. All origin, no story, the film goes nowhere and spends a long time doing it. On the plus side, Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell give their all, and the film at least dares to be different, following the Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and embracing a certain amount of darkness, most likely in an attempt to differentiate it from the MCU. More of a noble failure than most give it credit for, but it's also a total mess.

The Fantastic Four (1994) ★½

Feel sorry for Alex Hyde-White, the big screen’s best Reed Richards, stuck in a film that has the dubious honour of being so bad it was never released. The truth is far more complex than that, but this is definitely a sub-par B-movie that looks like it was made in 1984, not 1994. Made for the wrong reasons but with a couple of surprisingly good moments, it’s predominantly packed with bad choices, terrible scripting, and laughable performances. A wonderfully hammy Dr Doom makes this kinda fun, as does a too-good-for-this performance by Hyde-White, and a valiant effort from Rebecca Staab in a horribly underwritten role as Sue Storm. The effects are dire, but far worse films have been released. And while this might be a bad film, it's still more fun than at least a couple of the films on this list.