Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Some of these superhero cartoons feel especially lightweight, like an eight-page comic that is opened, flipped through, closed and discarded in almost one motion, like this sequel to the original Venom featuring a villain who is vividly brought to life by an oddly-wigged Woody Harrelson but only for a few moments — a moment involving chickens, one about a dinner date, and a sfx-laden car-ride moment — before he is dispatched in a climactic sfx spectacle, chomped by Tom Hardy's symbiot (investigative journalist Eddie Brock and his cartoony, toothy alien parasite, Venom, who leaps out from between Brock's shoulderblades) and then the credits roll, before we learn anything interesting — or anything at all —about Brock, about Venom (he eats chickens), about that villain, or about Brock's three "in-the-know" allies: a shopkeeper, a former lover, and the former lover's new man. 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

This Means War (2012)

Two intelligence operatives start dating the same woman and while she, with her bestie's help, wrests with the question, "How big of a slut am I?" the spies covertly film her, shadow her, break into and bug her home and office and manipulate her, and the most telling thing about the whole deeply unlikeable affair is the men are just keeping checks on each other - the incursion upon Reese Witherspoon's character's life is incidental, something that doesn't seem to occur to anyone.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Venom (2018)

Like the title character, Venom, a deep-voiced cartoony many-toothed alien parasite with a permanently protruding tongue that somehow doesn't get bitten off, this Marvel superhero genesis story is in a desperate race to reach symbiosis: Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock, Venom's host, is one minute sitting with a deathly pallor in a restaurant fishtank eating live lobsters and the next is exchanging wisecracks with his new partner in fighting street crime — I didn't want to watch it, but the movie needed twenty more minutes to calmly set things up instead of quick-sticks racing to a scribbly mess of a climax because, presumably, there are more episodes to make.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Locke (2013)

A gripping character study of a man making a trip in his car that will rock his life on multiple fronts - how he handles the fallout from his decision to make that trip, in phone conversations with his wife, son and work colleagues, makes for a thrilling 84-minute car ride!

★★★★☆

 CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS