Venom
Always heard this was good, never got around to seeing it. Now I have, and it is! Well-drawn characters, solid plot, fun jokes, one of the few Sony movies that can stand toe-to-toe with the MCU.
Reviews were correct about the great dynamic between Venom and Eddie, but kinda overhyped the idea of Eddie being, let’s say, a scrungly sweaty failboat loser. Okay, he spends a good chunk of the movie sweaty, but it only starts after his body gets hijacked by the gloopy man-eating alien parasite. He’s a competent professional in his career (investigative journalist, one of the few jobs where you can get fired for being too good, which is what happens). He can afford an apartment that’s comfortable, if not fancy. He’s not going to be a street-fashion icon any time soon, but from some Tumblr posts you’d think he can barely dress himself or comb his hair, and no? He’s fine. He’s just…normal.
A choice I really appreciated: his partner breaks up with him early in the movie, later she’s seeing someone else, and when Eddie interacts with the new guy, nobody is creepy/jealous/toxic about it. They don’t fight over her, they don’t do macho posturing about who’s better for her, she doesn’t do anything to make it weird or pit them against each other. When they first meet, Eddie is in the throes of severe Venom Problems, and the New Guy immediately jumps to an earnest “this guy is in trouble, I should try to help.”
Look at these mature adults! Revolutionary idea.
Another detail I liked: so the bad guy is this techbro CEO, the “move fast and break things, by which I frequently mean break people, that’s progress!” kind. In his first appearance, he’s giving a school class a tour of his science projects, by which I mean “the projects he hires real scientists to do, harasses them into doing unethically, and then takes all the credit for.”
One of the kids tries to ask a question. Another one shushes her. Evil Techbro gives a rousing speech about not silencing her, it’s important to question things, brilliant thinkers like him only get anywhere if they’re not afraid to stand up and speak!
…He never lets the kid ask the question.
The movie doesn’t linger on it, doesn’t stop and make sure you’ve noticed what a clever establishing character beat that was. It just is, quietly, very clever about it.
The Santa Clauses
Normally I would’ve saved this for December, but, you know, plan expiring.
Two 6-episode TV seasons, following up the trilogy of movies. In season 1, the human who took over as Santa is thriving, but his family isn’t doing so great — wife feels stifled and erased in the Mrs. Claus role, two kids being raised at the North Pole feel isolated and poorly-socialized. He finally clocks that they need a change, and decides to retire.
Spoiler alert, after some culture shock moving back to the normal world, he un-retires in the end. With, in theory, the whole family taking a healthier approach to their roles. Not sure if it quite nailed that balance, but the thing it was trying to do is nice.
They did better with the temporary replacement Santa. He had to be set up as a candidate the audience would initially root for, thinking “he’s got everything a good Santa needs.” But when put to the test, he had to catastrophically fail at the job, in a way that was sufficiently pre-seeded that it didn’t feel like a cheap swerve. And then it had to end with “he’s learned a lesson, we forgive him, but we aren’t rooting for him to get a second chance at the job — he’s become a better person, but he hasn’t gotten the temperament to be a good Santa.”
That’s a tough needle to thread, and the writers handled it deftly. Every step of that, I think they stuck the landing.
One more note: The show does some pretty heavy retcons of Santa-related worldbuilding from the movies, and tbh I liked the original setup better. But it was cool to see a gathering of various takes on Santa throughout the centuries — the costume designers clearly had fun with them. (Current Santa kept trying to make “the Yule-verse” happen. It didn’t take.)
Haven’t watched season 2. Will I make it? TBD.
Rewatching: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Phineas and Ferb
Targeted rewatch of favorite Moon Girl episodes, since I’ve seen them recently-enough to remember which ones those are. (Quick recs: the one where Lunella meets the Beyonder, the one where she brings home the class hamster and Devil Dinosaur loses him, the one where Devil goes undercover at a dog show.)
Such a delightful series. The characters are precious, the shenanigans are on-point. Still think it was a bad idea to end Season 2 on a cliffhanger of Lunella’s mom going “You are never doing this again!” First two seasons came out February ’23 and February ’24, now it’s September and there’s still no word of a renewal for season 3. You jinxed yourselves, guys!
I originally went through all of Phineas and Ferb when it was on Netflix, and I’ve been slow-roll rewatching on Disney. Definitely won’t get to the end of that before the sub expires; the episodes have such a set formula that it gets wearying if you try to watch a bunch in a row. Which is not a complaint about the show — it’s a formula with a lot of interlocking pieces that takes effort to get right, the amount of times they pulled it off is art — it’s just not good for bingeing.
There is an episode where Phineas and Ferb’s mom finds out about, and tries to put a stop to, all the dangerous genius shenanigans they’re getting up to. It’s not an end-of-season cliffhanger, and it gets retconned by the end of the adventure (without looking it up, my best guess about the method is “time travel” or “amnesia ray”). And they got four seasons! Plus a whole array of specials/movies.
Mom Lafayette and Mom Flynn-Fletcher should co-found some kind of “my genius child built WHAT in the basement/backyard?” support group. There must be so many protagonist moms who could use it.
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