MOVIES WITH DAVE

This is a week that can be summed up in a single word for me.

Expectations.

The image you’ve built in your head from previews, news, cast interviews and so on, can play a huge factor in how much you actually end up enjoying a film.

Sometimes when you go into a theater expecting complete and utter garbage, you end up lowering your expectations so much that any glimpse of quality makes the movie seem decent and even entertaining.

Other times there’s films which seem to have everything going for them. By all accounts they’re incredible, earning acclaim from critics and audiences alike. As a result your vision for the movie becomes larger than life, and sadly, almost impossible to live up to.

Even if the film is indeed quite good, it can never match what you imagined it would be. The end result can’t help but leave you at least a little disappointed.

The two films I saw this week were fantastic examples of both and how expectations can color your overall movie experience, good or bad.

I guess the lesson here is getting over excited about a movie is a bad idea in general. You’d think someone who goes to the theater on a weekly basis would have learned that by now, but apparently not.

You know what they say. Keep your expectations low and you’ll never be disappointed.

Anyway, let’s get to those reviews.

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First up is “Venom.”

Following a scandal that ruins his career, investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) accidentally becomes the host of an alien symbiote that gives him a violent super alter-ego named Venom.

Hunted by a shadowy organization seeking the symbiote, Eddie must rely on his newfound powers if he hopes to have a chance to survive.

I was not looking forward to this movie at all going into it.

Just the idea of the film itself seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.

Taking the most popular villain from the Spider-Man universe and throwing him in his own standalone movie with no Spider-Man in sight? That sounds like a terrible idea.

The whole thing felt like a soulless cash grab and before sitting down to see this movie my expectations could not have been lower.

That said, I ended up not hating this movie nearly as much as I thought I would going into it.

Not that I’d say this is a good film by any stretch, but compared to the dumpster fire I was expecting, the movie turned out kind of okay. Dare I say even entertaining at times.

For starters, the design for Venom here is really good. He’s like a creature of deep black tar with teeth, shifting and flowing around his body. Very ominous looking.

It’s certainly a massive step up from the awful Topher Grace version of Venom we saw back in 2007 in “Spider-Man 3” that’s for sure.

I also really liked the banter between Venom and Tom Hardy’s character. Venom with his deep bass booming voice and the meek Eddie Brock constantly freaking out whenever he hears this menacing voice in his head.

The whole scenario certainly makes for few memorable moments. Some are laugh out loud funny, others are downright awkward and even uncomfortable to watch.

Whether you enjoy the awkward moments probably depends on how much you enjoy watching public freakouts. Personally, I’m not a fan.

I’m also not much of a fan of the movie’s general story. It’s not unbearable and it’s easy enough to follow, but it’s incredibly standard as far as superhero origin stories go.

Hero gains newfound powers, slowly learns how to use them with a couple major action scenes sprinkled throughout, all the while a generic bad guy is seeking the same powers as the hero, and in the end the hero and villain have a major battle in the film’s climax, both having similar character designs and abilities.

It’s the same basic framework as the first “Iron Man.” Not to mention “The Incredible Hulk,” and “Ant-Man.” It’s old at this point. Completely played out. Do something new please.

What makes the story even more odd is the movie forces Venom into being a self sacrificing hero by the end of it.

Venom isn’t a hero. He’s a villain. The guy bites off people’s heads for crying out loud. Multiple times.

Making the guy who eats faces for fun into something heroic felt ridiculously forced to me.

It’s the exact same problem “Suicide Squad” had last year. The writers for these villain lead movies can’t seem to come up with stories without making the bad guys into good guys eventually.

And none of that is even my biggest problem with this movie. No, that would be Tom Hardy’s performance.

It’s not that Hardy’s acting was bad, but the way he decided to portray Eddie Brock was completely baffling to me.

The guy is supposed to be this famous television investigative journalist, yet he talks like a 5-year-old trapped in an middle aged man’s body.

He’s always mumbling and fumbling with his words. Not just when he’s freaking out with Venom’s voice in his head, that’s actually how he interviews people in the movie too.

It reminded me of James McAvoy’s character in “Split” when he was pretending to be a little boy. I just couldn’t get my head around why he would have his character talk and act like that.

I’m not here to shame anyone with a speech impediment. I myself have a hard time getting words out more often than I’d like, not to mention an annoying lisp, but I also don’t have aspirations of being a TV news reporter either.

I don’t buy that anyone would hire this version of Eddie Brock to be a television journalist, let alone that he’d become a world famous one.

I think what keeps this movie from being a total failure is the film isn’t bogged down with too many characters like “Suicide Squad” or “Spider-Man 3” and it isn’t overloaded with plot points like “Batman v Superman.”

At the end of the day, the characters of Eddie Brock and Venom in this movie are still fun to watch. They keep things simple and they don’t take everything too seriously.

“Venom” is filled to the brim with problems, really obvious easy to criticize problems, but fortunately that doesn’t keep the movie from being entertaining to watch. Or at least they didn’t for me.

This isn’t a movie I’d rush out to watch, but it was certainly much better than I thought it’d be.

Strap in, lower your expectations as far as they’ll go, and you just might enjoy this messy theme park ride of a movie.

“Venom” is rated PG-13.

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The other movie this week is “A Star is Born.”

In this new take on the tragic love story, Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) a seasoned musician, discovers, and falls in love with, a struggling artist named Ally (Lady Gaga).

She has just about given up on her dream to make it big as a singer until Jack coaxes her into the spotlight. But even as Ally’s career takes off, the personal side of their relationship is breaking down, as Jack fights an ongoing battle with his own internal demons.

I have been looking forward to this movie for months.

From the first moment I saw the trailer, I had nothing but the highest expectations for this movie.

I love Gaga’s music, especially her acoustic work. If you haven’t listened to Gaga sing without post processing, you’re definitely missing out.

There’s so much power and emotion in voice. I can’t help but be moved whenever I hear her sing.

And luckily, the music here didn’t disappoint one bit.

Gaga’s singing is incredible in this movie. I dare you to listen to “Shallow” from the film’s soundtrack and not feel something deep within your soul.

That one song alone had every hair in my body standing on end, goosebumps everywhere, and tears streaming down my face.

Even as I write this review I still get chills while listening to this song.

I would be shocked if I don’t see “Shallow” nominated for an Oscar come awards season. It’ll be an incredibly hard contender to beat, that’s for sure.

Of course there’s more than one song in this movie, and while I didn’t think any of the film’s other songs were nearly as electric as “Shallow,” there’s still plenty of fantastic music throughout the movie.

I had no idea Bradley Cooper could sing before this movie, but he has a surprisingly good voice.  I certainly didn’t have any trouble believing him as a famous country singer.

The acting here is nothing to sneeze at either.

Cooper and Gaga have fantastic chemistry together. My favorite part of the movie, beyond “Shallow,” was probably the two of them just sitting around and getting to know each other through their shared love of music.

And seeing their relationship blossom only made it all the more heartbreaking to watch Cooper’s character succumb more and more to his own self destructive tendencies.

If you’ve seen any of the three versions of this film, 1937 with Janet Gaynor, 1954 with Judy Garland, or 1976 with Barbra Streisand, you already have a good idea how this latest movie plays out.

Things are different here and there, but in the end this is still a remake. If you’ve seen one version of the film there isn’t much in the story that will take you off guard. If you’re expecting something brand new, you’re going to end up disappointed.

That isn’t a criticism though. This movie being remade three times only speaks to its timelessness. The same story that was told back in 1937 is still relevant in 2018.

I don’t mind studios remaking films one bit as long as the filmmakers strive toward quality, and that was definitely the case with this movie.

But while I do think this is a great film, it sadly wasn’t a perfect experience for me.

This might just be an issue for me, but I struggled to understand at least a quarter of the words coming out of not only Bradley Cooper’s mouth, but also Sam Elliott’s, who plays Cooper’s brother in the film.

The two of them are peas in a pod. Both have this gruff country way of speaking that I couldn’t parse together for the life of me. A lot of the time it just sounded like mumbling.

It was so bad I’m certain I missed a couple of the movie’s plot points because of it. There were a couple times in the film where the story seemed a bit disjointed to me, but it was probably just my inability to not understand two of the film’s characters.

The other thing I’d caution before seeing this movie is just because the film says it’s a musical on paper, don’t go into it expecting something like “Mamma Mia” or “The Greatest Showman.”

When I think of a musical, I think of a movie where characters suddenly break out into song out of nowhere with elaborate song and dance numbers.

This movie is much more grounded than that.

Where the line between reality and fantasy is often blurred in most movies I’d consider musicals, all the singing in this film takes place in reality.

It’s not a positive or a negative, but still you should probably know what kind of movie you’re going into.

All in all, I thought this was a really well made film with some truly excellent musical performances.

It might not have quite lived up to my larger than life expectations, but I think that was more my fault in creating those massive expectations rather than problems with the film itself.

Regardless this is definitely a movie well worth your time. One that’s very easy to recommend to movie and music lovers alike.

“A Star Is Born” is rated R.