The View From The Mountain

Hey, Venom’s back, and he brought Carnage with him! The first Venom film snuck up on me, despite the fact that I was never a huge fan of the character. It was Tom Hardy’s deft performance, along with the generous dash of humor, that won me over with the first Venom film. But the inclusion of Woody Harrelson in a scene at the very end, along with the hint that he would be Carnage, was so tantalizing that I wished that had been the main storyline of the first film. Well, Carnage--a villainous version of Venom in red--takes center stage in this sequel, as Woody Harrelson’s deadly alter-ego runs rampant over San Francisco, aided by his girlfriend (well-played by Naomi Harris, who played Moneypenny to Daniel Craig’s James Bond), who can kill people with a blast of her ear-shattering shriek, sort of like Marvel’s villainous version of DC’s Black Canary. With two fine actors as these playing baddies, it’s a shame they’re not on screen for very long to be really e...

It’s easy to see why Free Guy did so well financially. It was a refreshing blast of fresh air for pandemic-weary audiences who desperately needed a good laugh. Ryan Reynolds stars as Guy, a NPC (Non-Player Character) in an open-world video game who goes through a monotonous daily existence as a bank teller over and over--until he abruptly becomes self-aware and starts subtly changing his routine. When Guy takes the sunglasses off of a criminal who tries to rob his bank, the sunglasses shows him a side of his world that he had literally never seen before, like video game rules and aids being presented to him. This is reminiscent of John Carpenter’s They Live, where a pair of special sunglasses shows the hero in that film how the world really works, as well. And just like in They Live, once he keeps wearing the sunglasses, Guy also starts to see his world for what it really is: a violent arena ruled by sadistic psychopaths (video game players), where Guy and his fellow NPC...