Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Lean on Me (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) There is a highly formulaic nature to the way Lean on Me is presented – the tough-as-nails principal taking on the challenge to reform an inner-city school that everyone has written off as hopeless. He shocks students, surprises teachers, annoys parents, and gathers support even as firefighters (!) and parents of bad kids league against him. There have been a number of films along those lines throughout the 1980s–1990s (Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, etc.) but even coming late to Lean on Me, I can recognize that this is the Big Kahuna of the genre – slickly made, easy to like, featuring good actors enjoying the material and a schematic structure that focuses on the essential even if it means steamrolling a few troublesome questions along the way. The standout performer here remains Morgan Freeman, tearing into a character that would be practically unbearable had he been played by a lesser actor. The first thing any viewer will notice in watching Lean on Me is how nearly every single scene in its first act is juiced-up for maximal impact: the headstrong principal walks in, spits out some tough-love rhetoric, slaps hands and imposes change. Ne’er-do-wells are sent home, hard-working students and teachers are protected, and the principal embodies the management principle of taking responsibility for his actions. More than that, the rhythm is sustained at a high pace throughout that opening half-hour – it’s bang, bang, bang one big moment after another. There’s something interesting, then, in that unlike many films, the complexity of the plot increases as the film goes along, the consequences of the protagonist’s decisive actions creating complications that then take over the back-half of the film. It’s all good fun, but if you’re raising your eyebrows at the way the protagonist goes about things and making enemies, the film isn’t really interested in addressing your concerns or showing a softening of his attitude (or showing how academic improvement is performed) – the protagonist is always right, remains right and will not be challenged: the world changes to accommodate him rather than the inverse. While that does make for a fun power fantasy that lasts about as long as the closing credits, a sober second look at the film isn’t nearly so giddy. Still, on a first viewing, Lean on Me does make an impact, and it explains why it’s still in heavy rotation even thirty-some years later.

  • The Last Run (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’ve got this theory that one of the reasons why Classic Hollywood movies (anything before 1967) endure well is that there’s little basis for comparison with today’s films – they were doing something different due to the constraints of the Production Code, the tastes of the public and the technology of the time. Comparisons get closer and less favourable once you get into the New Hollywood era, especially when they attempt styles and genres perfected since then. So, the appeal of a proto 1970s car chase action movie like The Last Run doesn’t really resonate today as much as it did then – and considering that The Last Run wasn’t particularly well-received at the time, then imagine how it plays now. Glumly executed in the most annoying tradition of 1970s New Hollywood, The Last Run is absolutely not fun at all: it features an aging mob driver (a dour George C. Scott) living a miserable existence, tasked with one last job ferrying a killer from one country to another. You can already see the ways in which the film is not meant as crowd-pleasing entertainment, but the way it’s executed sucks whatever thrills the idea of a multi-country car chase could have led to – director Richard Fleischer doesn’t have much success staging stunts and action scenes, and it’s not as if the state of the art at the time was all that impressive in the first place. By the time the film ends on a sour note, The Last Run cements its status as a film to forget – substandard even by the yardsticks of the time, and now even less impressive. New Hollywood was a specific taste, and it doesn’t match with the idea of a fun action thriller.

  • La sirène des tropiques [Siren of the Tropics] (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Considering my unenthusiastic attitude toward silent-era drama, you would have been surprised to learn that La sirène des tropiques was one of my most anticipated DVR recordings of the month – something that popped up as a must-see when perusing TCM’s April line-up and that I watched as soon as possible. What could possibly explain this enthusiasm for a 1927 French silent film? Well, to keep it simple: La magnifique Joséphine Baker. I’ve written about Baker elsewhere, but to sum up: A poor black American girl emigrates to Paris in 1925 and, within a few years, becomes not only a celebrated signer/dancer, but the sex-symbol of the Art Deco era. I’ll leave out the most amazing elements of her later biography to focus on one thing: Cinema history records Baker as the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, which is… La sirène des tropiques.  The plot isn’t necessarily a shining beacon of progressivism, as a French engineer is sent to a Caribbean colony by a romantic rival arranging for a violent conclusion to his trip – but the intervention of a beautiful young woman (Baker) saves him and she falls in love with the Frenchman, stowing aboard a ship bound for Europe in her quest to be with him. Once in Paris, she eventually discovers that she’s ideally suited to music halls, allowing Baker to perform (and for the film to document) several of her best-known early routines. (Amusingly enough, the romance peters out, but it’s still a happy ending because our heroine finds contentment becoming Paris’ newest sensation.)  From a modern perspective, Baker’s character is squarely shown as exotic according to the prejudices of the time – she’s a happy-go-lucky kind of girl, speaks in primitive French and her wildness manifests itself in uninhibited dancing with very few clothes. (This may be one of the very few 1920s films with casual nudity –hers.)  That kind of role would be unacceptable today – but back then? It merely fuelled Baker’s fame. Indeed, she is the reason to watch the film: her performance is delightful, funny, likable, fresh, and energetic to the point of being athletic. It’s amazing that it captures Baker’s early performances at that stage of her career, not even three years in her European stardom. For Baker fans, La sirène des tropiques is a must see – and if you’re not a fan, it just may make you one.

  • Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) It’s perfectly acceptable to be skeptical about Searching for Bobby Fischer– I mean: a drama about a kid chess player, from the perspective of his father? Who’s going to want to watch that? But in the tradition of sports films, the clever script (adapted from a true-story nonfiction book by the father of true-life juvenile chess champion Josh Waitzkin) manages to make chess exciting, using dramatic elements for suspense, and extracting life lessons from an esoteric pursuit. While our kid champion is at the centre of the plot, you can reasonably argue that the lead of the film is his father, as he tries to channel his son’s passion in a life that won’t consume everything in favour of chess. Written and directed by Steven Zaillian with notable roles for Joe Mantegna, Laurence Fishburne, Joan Allen and Ben Kingsley, Searching for Bobby Fisher makes for breezy, absorbing viewing. It’s a film that spends as much time on the notion of fair play and life balance as it does on winning, giving it a slightly different edge than most sports films. (Still, you can reasonably wonder if chess gives permission for that kind of take – whether “don’t let sports consume you” and “play fair even if you lose” would work as well in the context of more hypermacho sports such as football.)  The direction is unobtrusive and the film flows well between family, coach and competitive contexts. Far more accessible than “a chess movie” would suggest, Searching for Bobby Fisher also has potential as a family film, especially as a discussion piece with overachievers.

  • The Daisy Chain (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) If you’ve seen any of the countless evil-kid horror movies out there, then you’ve already seen most of what The Daisy Chain has to offer. Part of being a film reviewer is answering a simple question: does this film justify its existence? Does it offer novelty, entertainment, reflection, or emotion? The answer here is troubling, because The Daisy Chain is strikingly unoriginal, dull, superficial and empty. The dreariness sets in early as a young mourning couple moves to a godforsaken Irish village to escape their problems: For one thing, I really don’t want to be stuck in an Irish village; for another, anyone with a milligram of genre savviness knows that this attempted kind of escape always ends up creating new and worse problems for the couple. So when an autistic girl coming from nowhere (warm up those violins, because it’s going to get worse) is gradually adopted by the family, it’s a foregone conclusion that none of this will result in sunshine, rainbows or unicorns. The female lead character (played by a really pregnant Samantha Morton) is pregnant? Oh dear. The male lead doesn’t want to take in the young girl? I’ve got baaad news for him. The rest of the film’s 89 minutes feels more like three hours, as the film boldly goes through the expected plot points and ends on the just-as-predictable bloodbath. Some viewers will enjoy the dour execution, but if you have even the slightest distaste for evil-kid horror films, then The Daisy Chain is just the same, except not fun at all.

  • The Wind (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I did not expect to like The Wind. I’ve seen and reviewed enough silent-era melodramas to know that I don’t like the subgenre in the first place, so anything I’m going to watch faces an uphill climb for me to even say nice things about it. On paper, The Wind feels like a redundant film, as a southern belle encounters hardship upon settling in the American west – from romantic struggles to outright sexual abuse and always, always the omnipresent wind making people mad. This being said… The Wind does have two things working in its favour. The first is the atmosphere of the film, nearly taking on the feeling of a science fiction film in depicting an alien landscape where the desert is subjugated by a near-omnipresent wind kicking up dust, demolishing buildings, destroying hairdos and making life even more unbearable for everyone. The sequence in which a storm threatens a church offers a few thrills midway through, while the climax is set during a sustained gust either burying windows or revealing things hidden under the sand. (The production of the film was reportedly unbearable, with extreme temperatures and the physical pain of sand blown by aircraft propeller engines for the camera.)  Director Victor Sjöström strips everything down to very simple elements and if the pacing of the film remains silent-era-dull, there’s nothing a bit of fast-forward can’t fix. More than many other westerns, The Wind drives the point that the frontier wasn’t all pretty horses and sunsets – that its lack of niceties extracted a real toll on settlers. The other asset of the film is Lilian Gish – a gifted actress, but made more interesting here due to the film letting her hair run free. It’s meant as a visible effect of the constant wind, but it makes her look unusually modern, absent the period hairdo that usually stylizes the actresses of the time. Both of those elements combine to make the Wind far more interesting than anticipated. It’s somewhat appropriate that the film is now regarded as one of the peaks of silent-era drama – coming so late in the era that it was obsoleted by talking pictures by the time it made it in cinemas, but now stands are a remarkable achievement of 1920s filmmaking.

  • The Plague (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s an intriguing premise that gets The Plague going – what if all kids under nine (and any new babies being born) fell into a coma for a decade, and society had to adjust itself (through vast medical wards in high-school gymnasiums, for instance) in order to cope with the event and try to find a cure? So far so good, and you could imagine a great Children of Men-type science fiction drama trying to deal with the repercussions of such a mass social trauma. But here’s the thing: As a cheap nasty horror film, The Plague isn’t interested in any of that except making the kids-and-teenagers come out of their coma as ravenous hordes of zombies. At that point, it’s as if any interest in the film just pops to nothingness: Despite writer-director Hal Masonberg’s very occasional ability to find a striking image or two, The Plague soon and quickly disintegrates into yet another cheap zombie film, with very little to distinguish itself even when it thinks it’s trying to do something different (such as a group intelligence, for instance – it magnifies but does not change the problems facing the characters). Clive Barker’s name is prominently associated with the film as a producer, but he may have preferred remaining anonymous on this one. Humourless, witless and interest-free after a semi-promising first fifteen minutes, The Plague would ideally be avoided like its namesake – except that, seeing the way many Americans have embraced Covid, that expression doesn’t have the weight it once did.

  • Speedway (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If you needed any confirmation that fast cars and professional racing have been part of Hollywood’s DNA for a very long time, Speedway should be enough to convince you. Largely a silent film (although one shouldn’t underestimate the effectiveness of juicing up the soundtrack with racing noises), big chunks of it were filmed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, lending it a quasi-documentary appeal at times. A good thing too, because the actual plotting of the film adheres closely to the kind of ridiculous melodrama that was deservedly left in the silent era. Our story revolves around an ace driver heading to Indianapolis, but then there are romantic complications: a foster father with a weak heart and one wildly unconvincing aerial sequence. The plotting is this close to atrocious (I won’t even mention those last moments of the film, so dumb do they feel to describe), but Speedway is far more interesting when it’s geeking out about the newness of fast cars and flying pilots, presenting historical footage of the Indy 500, and showing us that it wouldn’t take much to (cough, cough, Turbo) bring much of the same material to twenty-first century audiences. Sure, the technical production values are rough, and lead actor William Haines belongs to the silent era, but the spirit of racing lives on and the film is far more tolerable than less-distinctive silent-era dramas.

  • Saint Jack (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) In writer-director Peter Bogdanovich’s filmography, Saint Jack is often regarded as his comeback picture: After a well-regarded run of three movies in the early 1970s, his mid-to-late 1970s accumulated three flops, and it’s only with Saint Jack that Bogdanovich regained his confidence and the appreciation of critics. (To say that the obstinate Bogdanovich had a roller-coaster of a career is understating it – you can even say that Saint Jack was the first of many comeback pictures.)  It was also a film notable for how it seemed to present a looser, earthier Bogdanovich – less formal, less gimmicky and more willing to embrace sex and nudity. Much of it has to do with the setting: Adapting a novel that takes place in Singapore but wasn’t warmly greeted by local authorities, Bogdanovich shot the film almost guerilla-style, hopping from varied locations around the city while misdirecting the government about the film he was shooting. It leads to what remains the film’s most enduring strength: the amazing, almost tactile atmosphere of late-1970s Shanghai, with the humidity, smells, ethnic intermingling and very specific landscapes all perceptible through the screen. Compared to its setting, the plot becomes dull and almost inconsequential – suffice to say that it’s about an American expatriate trying to navigate between various requests and entanglements, whether it’s from business partners, a romantic interest or what’s probably a CIA officer (played by Bogdanovich himself) trying to get him to take specific actions. Still, it’s the sense of place and time that remains most memorable, all the way to some very unusual local casting at a time when Hollywood was not that open to that kind of thing: Ben Gazzara (who doesn’t look like a movie star) is integral to the film working as well as it does, while the gorgeous Monika Subramaniam still looks and feels like a different kind of actress. (Indeed, she was a local with little professional experience, whose relationship with the writer-director led to the breakup of his second marriage with Cybil Shepherd– Look, Bogdanovich’s life was wild, all right? And I haven’t even delved into the way Saint Jack landed in his lap through Playboy magazine and a legal settlement between Shepherd and Hugh Hefner.)  Saint Jack was not exactly a big commercial or critical success when it was released, but it was good enough to convince Bogdanovich that he still had it, and critics that he was still worth paying attention after a humbling period. Today, it remains a time capsule of 1970s Singapore, a fading echo of the porno-chic era and one of Bogdanovich’s most distinctive efforts.

  • Boiling Point (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Watching Boiling Point so soon after the very similar Canadian effort Nose to Tail is a powerful reminder about the importance of execution in giving life to a premise. Both films are time-compressed narratives about embattled (white male) chefs trying to juggle domestic problems, substance abuse, a failing restaurant, unruly clients, financiers and food critics. They both clearly draw their inspiration from the pressure-cooker environment of a restaurant kitchen being slammed with customers, and derive traits from a stereotype of difficult (culinary) men that are somehow revered rather than shunned. One takes place in Toronto, while the other takes place in London, but you could probably swap entire characters, plotlines and incidents from one film to the other without changing much to the result. But here is the thing: while Nose to Tail was fine without being delicious, Boiling Point feels like a far more urgent and compelling proposition due to one striking conceptual decision: capture the entire film in one shot. And by that, I mean the old-school one-shot ethos: No CGI tricks, no elegant pans upwards while hours pass, no sweeping across columns or backs to hide the cuts: Writer-director Philip Barantini goes for 92 minutes of real-time intensity as lead Stephen Graham roams around the restaurant trying to keep his business venture together, schmooze investors and reviewers, deal with personal problems and harangue staff in doing better. There’s a pent-up intensity to the way the camera is choreographed, along with the multiple subplots, large cast, small space and the feeling that everything is coming apart. It’s invigorating even when it covers familiar grounds. A few great supporting performances do help a lot – specifically Vinette Robinson as a sous-chef who gets a terrific scorched-earth speech late in the film and precipitates the ending with a much-delayed decision. Now, I won’t call Boiling Point a perfect or even a great movie – despite the dizzying dance between camera and actors, there are a few lulls along the way, and the ending falls flat, as it doesn’t seem to whip itself up to a satisfying climax. I expected more from the final five minutes than how the film slows itself down to a coma right at the moment where everything should be exploding, and the glum final moments seem to take a very easy way out that doesn’t actually resolve any of the film’s ongoing conflicts. While the one-shot shooting has its advantages in building energy, it’s not so good in releasing it – there’s a coda missing, a sense of bringing everything back together that’s stronger than the bus-hits-the-protagonist kind of ending it settles for. Still, it’s quite a ride: While one-shot movies aren’t exactly rare any more with digital cameras and the example set by many predecessors, Boiling Point manages to use the format to distinguish itself in a restaurateur subgenre that’s otherwise getting crowded and stale. I’m going to remember it much longer than Nose to Tail, for instance, and that’s despite being a cheerleader for Canadian content.

  • Colossal (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2022) Years after placing Colossal in my Netflix queue, I finally saw it… dubbed in French, off a DVR late-night recording interspaced with ads. Not the ideal circumstances, not the best timing, but sometimes a DVR-based workflow is easier than streaming marginal choices, especially on a less-than-impressive Internet connection. Still, a good movie should remain identifiable no matter the viewing situation, right? Well, I think so – and if Colossal isn’t necessarily a great movie, it’s quirky and fun enough to be worth a look in less-than-ideal conditions. Anne Hathaway stars as a bit of a loser – a young woman with big dreams of becoming a writer, but whose drinking problems get her kicked out of her job, relationship, apartment and New York City itself. Going back to the empty family house of her childhood town, she gets to rebuild everything… with the help of a past flame (Jason Sudeikis).   So far, so small-town romantic comedy, right? We’ve seen endless Hallmark movies with roughly the same premise. But none of them has ever done anything close to what Colossal does next, which is to take a flying leap into surreal fantasy as our protagonist realizes that stepping on a playground at a specific time of the day will create a gigantic monster in Seoul duplicating her gestures. It gets even wilder when another person (for reasons badly explained in a flashback) also enters the playground and manifests himself in Seoul. Fully exploring the possibilities of its premise, Colossal also delivers a better-than-average romantic drama talking about women encountering terrible men, flipping the usual small-town romance into something far darker. There are few tidy answers here: no real steady progress from addiction to recovery, and little comfort to be gained from romantic clichés. Yet it goes big in its imaginative conceits. The blend of dull realism with wild surrealism is remarkable enough – and it will keep you glued to the screen, wondering what’s going to happen next and how far writer-director Nacho Vigalondo will push things. I don’t quite like the way the film wraps up, but that’s not a big deal, considering what it can deliver on its way there. Colossal may still be in your own Netflix queue, but if that’s the case, don’t worry: even six years later, there hasn’t been anything quite like it.

  • Nine Days (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Sparse and cryptic to the point of obtuseness, Nine Days still manages to distinguish itself through a heady fantastic concept, some maybe-profound observations on human nature and some good performances from genre actors we’re used to seeing in less-challenging fare. Much of the story takes place in a small desert house, where a man both watches people’s lives through disparate TV screens of VHS quality, and interviews various candidates for a chance at being reborn. This bardo-set film takes after a specific kind of fantasy – allusive to bigger truths, but debating issues around a kitchen table. It’s odd and will probably frustrate viewers looking for a strictly mimetic, logical narrative. But Nine Days is not that – you have to let yourself go (much like the characters) into a lack of comprehension, logic or consistency in order to appreciate what’s going on here. Moral dilemmas are sometimes explicitly stated (as part of the interviews between our arbiter and the candidates for rebirth) and sometimes become part of the fabric of the film. Few will be surprised to realize that our figure of authority may be in need of some guidance himself – the climax becomes his rather than giving it to another character. Some of the material is frankly pretentious and less effective than planned – there’s a whole discussion about the semi-magical nature of having lived that seems like pure useless nonsense – but some of the rest of the material is lively enough. Nine Days is also effective as an actor’s showcase: not only for lead Winston Duke, but fellow superhero-movie alumni Benedict Wong and Zazie Beetz as well. Beetz quickly gains centre stage – not just because she’s a remarkable beauty, but because she gets to play the character that challenges the authority of the arbiter in ways that supplicant candidates never do. I can see how some may view Nine Days as a profound film tackling big questions in a quirky, approachable format. I wouldn’t go that far – I felt that the script often went all over the place, often being too literal to present the elusive nature of universal truths, and at times too willfully obtuse to be effective – and making use of Whitman quotes shouldn’t count as a climax. But I have to respect the attempt: there is indeed something haunting to the set-up of the film that carries long after the flaws of the execution have faded, and writer-director Edson Oda’s Nine Days does attempt something remarkable.

  • Creation Stories (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I almost liked Creation Stories. In many ways, it’s a film that should be in my wheelhouse – a snappy, stylishly directed epic of music-fuelled excesses (somewhat based on a true story, but don’t obsess about that) tracking a headstrong, devious music executive (Alan McGee, played with panache by Ewen Bremner) as he builds a company out of scraps and shady tactics. The framing device has the older McGee telling the story to an incredulous journalist, with flashbacks from the 1980s–1990s handling the bulk of the picture. There’s some good music, of course, but I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed the result more if I cared more about British rock music of the time, or if I had a better grasp of the Scottish accent (thank goodness for closed-captioning) or if the film was more focused in its approach. The problem here isn’t the raw elements of Creation Stories’ story – but director Nick Moran’s approach, or maybe the lack of narrative connecting tissue in the script. As a result, the film flies past but doesn’t quite stick – it multiplies tangents such as politics with Tony Blair and a visit to Jimmy Saville designed to be creepy before everyone knew that Saville was a terrible person. Some moments work, and others depend on extra-movie knowledge (Oasis fans will like this film more than others) and the frenetic pace calls attention to itself but, in the end, Creation Stories feels like a first draft of a better film.

  • The Night Watchmen (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Cheap, unimaginative horror film are so numerous (especially as filler for cable-TV channels and streaming services) that jaded reviewers can get lulled into a sense of expected mediocrity – we come to expect such same clichés, monsters and repetitive characters that it can take a while for a more ambitious film to prove its distinction. So it is that The Night Watchmen can look and feel like a cheap vampire/zombie film in its setup, but it does finally distinguish itself the longer it goes on. The key here is the humour – not a terribly expensive special effect, but nonetheless an effective one in order to set the result apart from so many other “bunch of people fighting monsters in a closed-off environment.”  Here, our plucky heroes are security guards, a new hire and a journalist fighting vampire/zombie/clown creatures that are taking over a newspaper building. The horror gags and kills are serviceable, but the incredulous attitude and lively banter between characters make The Night Watchmen more interesting than many, many po-faced films going through roughly the same story in far less interesting fashion. Not overstaying its welcome at a mere 80 minutes, The Night Watchmen turns out to be a perfectly acceptable B-movie, a bit of a throwback to the glory days of 1980s horror/comedy with a bit of nudity to reinforce that lineage. Director Mitchell Altieri keeps things going at a good pace, and the result is unpretentious fun. I would have liked to see more of Diona Reasonover’s character and the security guards could have been differentiated more strongly (not to mention the rather dull opening minutes), but The Night Watchmen eventually reaches its goals and ends up with a surprisingly watchable film along the way. Although I suspect that approaching it with low expectations probably helped.

  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, April 2022) Considering my very mild appreciation of the first Venom, I’m as surprised as anyone to note that I liked sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage slightly more than the first one… at least in bits and pieces. Clearly leaning on the comedic elements of the first film and delivering plenty of winks and outright nods at the fannish shipping of Tom Hardy and his pet symbiote (all the way to couple-like bickering and a public coming-out declaration), Let There Be Carnage is looser and freer to play with established characters. The first half-hour of the film may be its best, as it goes for somewhat-imaginative odd-couple comedy, some good character moments and occasionally fulfills the innate craziness of its premise. Things get increasingly more conventional after that, ending not with a climax but a thud of an overextended gothic action sequence involving CGI characters fighting in a CGI cathedral with very little natural excitement emerging from its synthetic conclusion. Still – it’s snappier than its predecessor, Hardy is fine, Woody Harrelson doesn’t do too badly and Naomie Harris is suitably scary/sexy as a villain who ends up being a check on a worse villain. While Let There Be Carnage isn’t necessarily better than the good parts of the first film (nothing tops the wild chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco, for instance), it doesn’t have as many of the lows of its predecessor, and that explains part of why it’s an improvement, with the other part being going past the character’s origin story to become more comfortable with its own strengths. Much will be said about the mid-credit scene tying the series back into the all-consuming MCU, but really – did you expect anything different? Now let’s see where this goes.