Late to the Party

I am very happy to no longer have to write about the Oscars, though I reserve the right to complain about them when they displease me. But this year’s been mostly decent, especially since the flameout of Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez appears to have nudged Edward Berger’s Conclave back on track to be the well-made crowd-pleaser that seems likely to run straight up the middle to the top prize. And I can’t complain about that … though I do wish September 5 had been given more attention in the nominations.

Unlike Berger’s film, which offered us the glee of being a fly on the wall as a group of very powerful men vie for their world’s biggest prize, Tim Fehlbaum’s true-journalism thriller has a very different take on bearing witness to history. The film is set on one day in 1972, at the Summer Olympics in Munich – when Palestinian terrorists took the Israeli athletic delegation hostage, leading to a siege, a botched rescue attempt and mass carnage. September 5 traps us in the control room with the ABC Sports team, who realize their position covering the Games means they’ve become the world’s eyes and ears for the crisis.

I was surprised to recognize Fehlbaum as the guy behind the efficient but undistinguished genre exercises Hell and Tides; neither of those hinted at the technical facility he shows here, but neither of them had the bench of actors that drive September 5, either. As network executive Roone Arledge, Peter Sarsgaard reaches into the same reservoir of intelligence, integrity and responsibility he brought to Shattered Glass two decades ago, though the point man here is John Magaro’s untested producer Geoff Mason, whose slow news day becomes a churning nightmare of awful choices, each one weighing on the team in different ways. (Ben Chaplin and The Teachers’ Lounge breakout Leonie Benesch are also present as a reporter and translator who each have their own baggage.)

As a recovering journalist, I won’t pretend September 5 isn’t absolutely my catnip, but it packs more tension, commentary and thought into its 94 minutes than some other features offer in two and a half hours. I was glad to see the screenplay (by Fehlbaum, Moritz Binder and Alex David) score an Oscar nomination, but there were plenty of other categories where it could – and should – have placed.

Paramount’s Blu-ray release is surprisingly perfunctory: The movie looks and sounds great, but it’s the only thing on the disc. None of the extras included on the digital release – three production featurettes and two awards-circuit Q&As – made it onto the disc. (I can understand the Q&As being produced too late to include in the physical edition, but it’s still odd that the featurettes aren’t here.) The disc does come with a digital code, so you’ll at least have access to the supplements. And of course you can always listen to co-writer Binder’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie right here. (He picked The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a good conversation.)

If September 5 was slighted in the Oscar conversation, Venom: The Last Dance was downright screwed. If anything, AMPAS should have created a new award for what Tom Hardy and writer-director Kelly Marcel have accomplished with the concluding film in their Spider-Man-adjacent trilogy: Best Picture That Has No Right To Be This Much Fun.

Because The Last Dance is, on every level, utterly ludicrous entertainment. I flat-out hated the original Venom, a frenetic mess of a film that wasted a wildly overqualified cast on a blatant attempt by Sony to extend the studio’s hold on its Marvel license. Sure, Tom Hardy was having a good time, but did anyone else?

A billion dollars later, it was clear Venom wouldn’t be a one-off. The first sequel, released in the fall of 2021, let Hardy and Marcel (who wrote the script, with Andy Serkis directing) fully embrace the ridiculousness of their vision, pitting Venom and his miserable human host Eddie Brock against a horde of third-tier Marvel characters and ending with Eddie’s life in even more of a shambles than it had been before.

That’s where The Last Dance picks up, with Eddie and Venom laying low in Mexico after the events of the last film. (We glimpsed this, very briefly, at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home.) And while I don’t doubt an entire movie of Tom Hardy sitting around a bar arguing with the voice in his head would be entertaining, Venom’s audience demands big splattery fights – so Eddie and Venom are almost immediately targeted by a rampaging monster dispatched from a dark dimension by the ancient villain Knull (Andy Serkis in motion capture, of course) to seek out a mysterious McGuffin called the Codex … which just happens to be stored inside Venom, who is of course bonded to Eddie.

And we are off and running, as Eddie tries to outrun the monster – which can only track him if Venom fully emerges from his body, it’s a whole thing – while also trying to stay ahead of the authorities who think Venom killed Stephen Graham’s Detective Mulligan in the last movie. But there’s also this whole secret military operation, Imperium, that’s dedicated to finding Venom and other alien symbiotes by any means necessary. So that won’t go well.

It's all just an excuse for Hardy to run around various locations arguing with himself between elaborate action sequences, and honestly? It’s pure chaos, with Marcel gleefully yes-anding every premise and another wildly overqualified cast – this time featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Alanna Ubach, Clark Backo, Jared Abrahamson and Cristo Fernandez – looking on in wonder. I would too.

Because there really is nothing like watching Tom Hardy in this role. He’s always been an eccentric actor with questionable accent skills – it’s weird that his American characters all sound like an especially sleepy Adam Sandler, right? – but the dual role of exasperated Eddie and enthusiastic Venom gives him a stage as big as all outdoors.

Having long since abandoned the idea that Venom needs to be as villainous as he was in the comics, the sequels let Hardy give Venom an unlikely ebullience for a seven-foot-tall goo monster that feasts on the heads of bad people. He’s a monster with gusto, helping out kenneled dogs and abandoned horses in the desert and also embracing the bright lights and bustle of a Vegas casino. Sure, the horse gets Venomed, but only for a little bit.

Respect, as well, to whoever refused to change course on the “last” part of The Last Dance, and bring the series to a definitive end. The first movie didn’t need to happen, and now I’m just a tiny bit sad there won’t be a fourth one. How weird is that?

I was sent the Blu-ray edition of The Last Dance, so I can’t speak to the UHD/Atmos presentation on the 4K release, but the 1080p/DTS-HD 5.1 version looks awfully nice. I expect HDR will add more depth to the inky blacks of Venom and the smothering darkness of Knull’s realm, and the Atmos mix will let Hardy’s voice boom down from the ceiling in monster mode, so take that under advisement. As far as the Blu-ray, the picture is sharp and the sound is busy, and the suite of extras are the same on both formats.

Wondering how many cast members are speaking in an accent that’s not their own? Check out the blooper reel, which also demonstrates that no one took this thing seriously for even a second. “Author of Mayhem: From Writer to Director” celebrates Marcel’s career path and her friendship with Hardy, who is both her best friend and her biggest fan; Hardy gets his own brief featurette about his work on the trilogy, while other shorts look at the supporting cast, the stunts, the “legacy” of the Venom films and Tom Morello’s soundtrack contribution. Previz animatics and seven deleted scenes are also included, proving that some restraint has been exercised in the making of this thing.

Ah, who am I kidding. I had fun.

September 5 is now available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment. Venom: The Last Dance is now available on 4K and Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Up next: Warner upgrades Amadeus and Constantine to 4K, and good luck figuring out what those two have in common.