The last time audiences saw superpowered alien symbiote Venom (Tom Hardy) and his human “host” Eddie Brock (also Hardy) on the big screen, it wasn’t in a “Venom” movie, it was in a mid-credits sequence in 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The scene saw the pair briefly hop universes into the Disney-controlled Marvel Cinematic Universe, but then quickly get sucked back into the Sony-controlled Marvel universe – the one that has “Spider-Man” characters, but no Spider-Man (and is not to be confused with the animated Spider-verse). The scene is shown again at the beginning of “Venom: The Last Dance,” but it has no bearing on the story. Fans of the character should know not to expect MCU quality from this movie. This is the “Morbius”/”Madame Web” arm of the franchise.

The new film sees Eddie and Venom as fugitives in Mexico following some frowned-upon crimefighting in 2021’s “Let There Be Carnage.” They try to flee to New York, where they should be safe from human authorities, but they fail to factor in threats from non-humans. Venom’s recent activity inadvertently activated a device called a Codex, which exists as long as a symbiote and its human host are both alive. Supervillain Knull (Andy Serkis), imprisoned on a faraway planet, can use his minions called Xenophages to steal the Codex, break free and conquer the universe. I think the way it works is that if the Xenophages can swallow Venom alive, that counts as stealing the Codex for Knull. And simple evasion isn’t an option for Venom because the Xenophages are sure to cause a lot of collateral damage to Earth, and he’s the only one that can stop them. He and Eddie are going to have to fight.

If you thought I was spouting too much exposition just now, wait until you see the subplot about the secret Area 51 facility where symbiotes are studied by scientists like Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple). The character comes complete with a backstory about feeling guilt over the death of her brother, who wanted to be a scientist. I get the impression that she only devotes herself to science out of guilt and not passion. If the character is supposed to be passionate about her work, it’s not coming through in Temple’s performance. She has several conversations with the facility’s enforcer Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), one of those grunts that wants to kill any being he doesn’t understand, where all they do is explain the facility’s purpose to one another. Almost all of their dialogue could be preceded with the dreaded words “as you know…” because there’s no way these characters wouldn’t know all of this information already, but the audience has to be filled in.

Literally thrown off their flight, Eddie and Venom hitch a ride with the hippie Moon family, led by Martin (Rhys Ifans), on their way to Area 51 to try to see aliens. I guess the family’s scenes are supposed to be comic relief, but they aren’t funny. What is funny is a brief stop in Las Vegas where Eddie and Venom share a dance with franchise mainstay Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu). Could the scene be cut without doing a disservice to the story? Yes. Should the scene stay in because it’s a welcome distraction from the story? Also yes.

That scene aside, “Venom: The Last Dance” is a slog. The script is a mess, the new characters unlikeable, the action murky and hard to follow, and the mindless Xenophages are terrible antagonists, with Knull not exactly helping by sitting on the sidelines the whole time. I’d say that Hardy comes off relatively unscathed because he has pretty good chemistry with… himself (I can’t decide if that makes the repartee easier or harder), but then I found out he has a story credit on this slop, so I can’t let him off the hook. I hope this really is the “Last Dance” for these “Spider-Man”-adjacent movies outside the MCU and Spider-verse.

Grade: D

“Venom: The Last Dance” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images and strong language. Its running time is 110 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.

Trap is an unconventional effort from director/writer M. Night Shyamalan. He leans into the expectations in building a captivating suspense film with a mostly satisfying finale.

Shyamalan gets unfairly dinged by critics who impatiently wait for his film’s twists and then get upset when it doesn’t deliver. For Trap, Shyamalan relies far less on a movie-altering twist. Instead, the focus is on the relentless quest to track down a serial killer.

Cooper (a terrific Josh Hartnett) is vying for Father of the Year honors. He’s scored floor seats so his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) can fangirl out over the Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) concert.

While it’d be an easy layup to scream “nepotism!” to the heavens over Shyamalan casting his daughter as the pop starlet, it’s irrelevant. Saleka Shyamalan can sing and has a genuine pop star presence on the concert stage. And it’s not like he’s asking her to give some Oscar-winning dramatic performance. She just needs to play a pop superstar, which doesn’t feel like that big a stretch given her talent.

With its concert setting, the music is an integral part of Trap and Saleka Shyamalan is a major contributor as she wrote and performed 14 of the songs. The songs were catchy enough to warrant checking out the soundtrack (now available on Amazon).

Cooper quickly notices an unusually high concentration of police and armed security manning the entrances. He’s no fool and deduces they’re on to him. In a smart storytelling choice, Shyamalan doesn’t drag out the big reveal until the end — Cooper is indeed the serial killer the police are on hand to apprehend. The only catch is they’ve got no clue what he looks like just that he’s in attendance at the Lady Raven concert.

Hartnett’s performance is amazing. There are clearly different sides of Cooper at play from the trying too hard to be sweet and kind father making sure Riley has a great time and the calculating mastermind trying to escape this carefully constructed trap. Hartnett is in complete control of both aspects of Cooper’s personality in one of his strongest performances.

Donoghue is also enjoyable as the daughter who is actually appreciative of her father instead of hoping he’ll leave her alone. It makes the inevitable fallout that much more meaningful as the bond between father and daughter is well-earned.

Cooper keeps thinking ahead and avoiding the well-thought-out strategies of the profiler (Hayley Mills) on hand to aid the FBI and police making for some very suspenseful moments. It’s a little weird in the sense how Shyamalan wants the viewer engaged and marveling at Cooper’s strategy all while realizing there’s no good way to root for a serial killer.

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There are some moments that feel like Shyamalan got a little too cute in ignoring basic logic in favor of a more dramatic moment. Some of the concert crowd shots feel too intimate in a way that suggests most of the crowd were filled in via CGI.

The actual concert shots are well staged as Shyamalan places more emphasis on the singing and dancing via the large monitors rather than the stage. This provides more of a feeling of watching a concert onsite as opposed to watching a movie with a concert playing out.

Given the 1 hour and 45-minute run time, it would have been nice for Shyamalan to offer more insight into Cooper’s motives. Yes, Shyamalan provides a cursory rationale of Cooper feeling a monster is inside him and some basic mommy issues, but Trap would have played out stronger with an actual explanation beyond “he’s crazy.”

At the midway point, Shyamalan seems to have that elusive motive lined up in his sights when Cooper mentions that Riley battled leukemia. Cooper’s murder spree being the result of him getting some measure of revenge on the doctors, hospital staff and insurance agents that let Riley suffer could have provided Trap with a more complicated narrative.

As seemingly is his norm, the third act starts to get away from Shyamalan a bit. Fortunately, he can lean heavily on Hartnett to get it back on track. Trap has some problems, but it’s a fun suspense thriller that kept me engaged right through to the credits.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Photo Credit: Warner Bros. 

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Anyone who’s watched a romance film knows the most vital ingredient in such a film is chemistry between the two characters in love. This chemistry is bountiful in the new release, We Live in Time starring Andrew Garfield (tick, tick… BOOM! 2021) and Florence Pugh (Dune: Part Two, 2024) as two young people living in England whose paths intersect violently and then turn into romance. Over multiple years, their relationship endures through self-doubt, fertility challenges, secrets of the past, and a frightening health diagnosis.

We Live in Time is not a romantic comedy, because it has a slightly melancholic tone throughout with lots of quiet dialogue and heartfelt montages of lovers doing fun activities together. Both Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh give believably vulnerable performances. He is shy and socially clumsy while she is ambitious and open-hearted. They find comfort in each other during life’s hardships, portraying a love that is resolute and demurely steadfast.

Nick Payne is the screenwriter for this film, and he wrote another romance tinged with tragedy from 2021 called The Last Letter from Your Lover. He also wrote on a few episodes for the popular Netflix series, The Crown, and that’s where you can spot the similarities in his writing style. Nobody in We Live in Time talks too much, so none of the dialogue feels forced or superfluous. Everything feels tender and natural, because this film clearly wants everyone to like it. So why did I walk out of the theater with only a shrug as my emotional response?

Irish Director John Crowley keeps this film consistent with genuine bittersweet milestones in the lives of these ordinary people, much like he did with his Oscar-nominated film, Brooklyn (2015). But I couldn’t ignore my feelings that I had seen films like this already. I’m talking about Love Story (1970), Dying Young (1991), One Day (2011), The Vow (2012), and there’s plenty more to include here. Telling the story of We Live in Time in a non-linear way is a nice surprise and adds some interest jumping around to different periods in the lovers’ lives without any hints or foreshadowing. But I still left the theater with dry cheeks wondering why I wasn’t more touched.

Is my heart made of stone, dipped in garbage, and soaked in manure? Am I emotionally handicapped against the romantic lives of straight white people? If that’s the truth, then I’ll just say We Live in Time is sweetly adequate. It’s true not every film needs to be a brilliant bolt of lightning showing something new and pushing boundaries. We Live in Time is an example of this. So it will tug some heartstrings, but it isn’t exactly an exciting choice for movie lovers out there. (But maybe for romance movie lovers, it WILL be an exciting choice.)