Kraven The Hunter- I have to believe that there are shenanigans going on at Sony, when JC Chandor (Margin Call) is incapable of directing a film in the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe that is worth watching. Chandor broke through with his impressive stock broker thriller, and then later took Robert Redford out on a boat for All Is Lost, a performance that should have landed Redford a nomination. So, what actually happened with Kraven? Is it that the film was ill conceived from the beginning, or has Chandor lost all of his skills? To be fair, I don’t hate this quite as much as everyone else. It does add up to one more film that has totally misused Ariana Debose following her Oscar win, but Aaron Taylor-Johnson wasn’t terrible. Russell Crowe obviously had a better feel for what kind of movie he was in. He’s hamming it up, aware he’s in a film that is called Kraven The Hunter. They’ve decided to blend together the origin stories for Kraven and Rhino, which seems unnecessary, but Rhino was also unnecessary the last time we saw him in a movie. The problem with Kraven is that it is embracing a villain, and not having any fun doing so. The Venom films work on some level, because they play around with the battle between Eddie Brock, and Venom, leading to a complicated anti-hero that clearly does bad things, but inadvertently saves the day. And, as Will Smith would say in Men In Black, he “makes it look good.” We’ve seen these complications with morally ambiguous Deadpool, the violent Blade, and even Spawn.On the other hand, we’ve also seen the straight villain origin story played to perfection in Joker, where the bad guy is just bad. You can blame circumstances, but he doesn’t accidentally become a hero. Madame Webb had a weaker plot, characters, and structure, but at the end, Webb did accidentally defeat someone worse than she could ever be, and saved lives. What does Kraven do? What does he bring to the table? Not much. While the cast here is more interesting, and overall better cast in their roles, the film lacks any charm or charisma, and Kraven becomes as void of personality as Morbius. He becomes a missed opportunity, lost in an attempt to offend no one, he also has nothing to say, and offers nothing but a string of predictable sequences that resemble a character arc, mixed with just a dash of flair by the usually talented Chandor.The audio description for this film is fine, and you’ll be pulled into the films attempt at exciting comic book action, but perhaps this project was never truly thought all the way through. It isn’t the worst superhero film I’ve seen, and I enjoyed it marginally better than Madame Webb, but it does feel like Sony has totally run out of gas in this realm of centering films around villains. If they can’t come up with a reason why, then it just becomes a time waster.
Rotten: Final Grade: C-, Audio description: B+
Armor- Truly, not worth the words. Armor is an exercise in “WTF”? The movie was shot in almost record time, has very little location changes, apparently is directed by no one and everyone at the same time depending on what set rumors you subscribe to, and has Sylvester Stallone in a rather impressive amount of screentime given the fact that he was paid 3.5 million for a day of shooting. Should you watch this, remember they filmed for about two weeks, and Stallone’s screentime is all from one day. The movie is basically bad guys trying to hijack an armored vehicle on the road (one that apparently sees no traffic), and Stallone and his crew didn’t count on one of the drivers being an ex-cop. That actor, Jason Patric,is also better than this material. There’s a truly stupid backstory for his character, where his family chastises him for helping a disabled vehicle while they are headed onto vacation, and this choice, the one of a police officer helping someone, costs him everything. Now, he’s in recovery, and trapped in an armored vehicle. I’m sure both Patric and Stallone wonder how they reached this career low, but used this paycheck to buy themselves something nice. the audio description wasn’t too bad. This film is so awful, it will end up as thankless audio description, as very few will ever be interested in this. it still wasn’t the worst film I saw, and Stallone’s presence made a few scenes watchable (as did Patric). Sometimes, paying decent actors to read bad scripts make them a little less terrible than the bad film with bad actors.
Rotten: Final Grade: D, Audio Description: B
The Listener- i watched Steve Buscemi’s directorial effort without audio description, and it was the only narrative feature without audio description I gave a grade to in 2024. Then, hilariously, about a month later Amazon added a TTS audio description track. I’m not super excited to go back and listen to a robot narrate this, so I’ll be honest. it is Tessa Thompson on a phone, as a crisis hotline operator, by herself the entire movie. her own apartment. the biggest location shift she seems to make is walking out onto her porch, and then back inside to change things up. buscemi relies heavily on thompson’s measured performance, and those of the variety of actors he got to do the calls. Rebecca hall had the most memorable call, for me. But, there are several throughout the film, all different lengths, and different topics. This movie has no discernible plot, and it just is an extension of Thompson as a performer. I don’t know what it does for Buscemi as a director, spending the shoot capturing her performance, but it is a showcase for an actress who has yet to be nominated for an Oscar. Not an amazing film, but an interesting one.
Fresh: Final Grade: B+, Audio Description: N/A
