4k-UHD/Movie Review: Venom

 

Venom is a 2018 Sci-Fi action movie starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Jenny Slate. It is an MCU-adjacent movie that exists in the world of Spiderman, but the decision was to use it as a stand-alone movie without using the black suit version of Spiderman to introduce Venom (as was done in Spiderman 3). Therefore, in this version, multiple symbionts were brought to Earth from a space mission that killed all but one of the astronauts. They were discovered by the head of the company that funded the mission called Life Sciences (played by Ahmed), who then began experimenting with bonding the symbionts with homeless and drug-addicted humans. Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a former reporter who was fired and now doing freelance work. Of course, one of the symbionts joins with him to form Venom.

The movie is a great blend of action and very dark humor. Because they did not use Spiderman, Venom is introduced as the anti-hero version of the character, doing bad things (mainly eating) bad guys. Michelle Williams plays the ex-wife of Eddie Brock. She does a really great job playing off Tom Hardy and brings a lot of comedy to the movie, which is outside her usual acting roles. The best part of the movie is the discussions/arguments/bickering that goes on between Brock and Venom, mostly in Brock's mind which makes it look to everyone else like he is talking to himself. It also requires Hardy to do a lot of physical comedy, which he turns out to be great at.

The 4K set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. On the UHD disc, there is only the movie and a preview of the movie Into the Spiderverse. All the other extras are on the regular Blu-ray. Those include several deleted scenes, including an extended version of the end credits scene which teases where the next movie will go, assuming it gets made, then about an hour's worth of making of and behind-the-scenes material mixed with some featurettes on the history of the Venom character. So there are a lot of good extras.

I cannot say everyone will like the movie, and it definitely pushes the PG-13 rating to the limit, mostly because of the language. There is a lot of swearing and some sexually suggestive jokes. It is closer to Deadpool than it is to, say, Avengers. But it puts a different twist on the MCU movies and sets up a good possible franchise to exist in that universe. It is worth checking out.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn

 

My Week with Marilyn is a movie from 2011 starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, and Emma Watson. It tells the story of the filming of the movie The Prince and The Showgirl from the late 1950s. Specifically how the third assistant director on the film (or Gopher as is more aptly titled) played by Eddie Redmayne befriended and ultimately fell in love with Marilyn Monroe, played by Michelle Williams. It does a great job telling the story of how unreliable she could be to work with and how Laurence Olivier, portrayed wonderfully by Kenneth Branagh, who was the star and director of that movie, both despised working with and was in awe of Marilyn. He put up with her both because he was trying to use her appeal as being the biggest actress in the world at the time to revive his lagging career and because he wanted to sleep with her.

The A/V quality of the blu-ray disc is very good. While there are not really any special effects or CGI of note used in the movie, there are some really nice cinematographic shots that look great in HD. As for extras on the Blu-ray, there is a commentary track on the movie by director Simon Curtis and a 20-minute making-of/behind-the-scenes feature. Ultimately, the movie is very good. For Williams's part, although she did not have the appeal of Marilyn (although, let's face it, few actresses before her or since could even come close), she did very well at showing Marilyn's vulnerability, flaws, and loneliness. She did a good job at showing that the public face Marilyn gave was just an act, and was not really her. And while the movie does not deal with her death, it certainly sows the seeds of the fact that it was that duality and both not wanting the fame, but not being able to give it up that caused her to drink and become more and more dependent on pills to function which ultimately led to her death. It is absolutely worth the time to watch, regardless of whether you are a fan of Marilyn Monroe or otherwise.