Titans: "Titans" (Review)

Titans (2018)

So I fully embraced my millennial status the other week and decided to drop $7.99 per month on DC Universe, DC Entertainment's new video on demand service. My decision to do so was made primarily out of nostalgia, as the service offers on demand streaming of some of the cartoons of my childhood, like the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, as well as Teen Titans, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. I knew that DC Universe was going to feature its own live action shows, à la Netflix, and the first of these shows, Titans, recently launched. I had an hour to kill the other day and decided to give the first episode (also titled 'Titans" because reasons) a shot.

I had no real expectations going into the episode. The most I'd heard about Titans was some bad press in the months leading up to its release, hearing most frequently that the previews just made the show seem "too dark." I don't understand this logic when it comes to comic books and their adaptations. Comics deal with some of the darkest content I've ever read. So those initial reactions to the trailers weren't enough to deter me from viewing. Having viewed the episode, though, I have to admit that the show is surprisingly dark. Perhaps it's because I grew up with the cartoon versions of these characters that I think this, but some of the content is quite adult in nature.

This isn't a criticism, to be sure. It could become one, depending on how much the show indulges in violence and sexual content. In the first episode, at least, the fine line between too much and thematically appropriate is walked admirably. There is blood spray when someone is punched or shot that isn't exactly common in most primetime television shows. In Titans, this isn't excessive, but it does serve as a reminder that heroes don't necessarily enjoy punching bad guys, because it requires them to get their hands dirty. It's one thing to watch a hero beat up the bad men, deliver a quip, and then fly away. It's a wholly other thing to watch the hero have to go home and clean the blood from his suit, and this is the course that Titans charts very early on.

Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) was trained to be Robin by Batman. But, at some point in the past, Dick didn't like what he was becoming while in Batman's shadow, so he left his mentor behind to carve out a life of his own as a detective in Detroit. While in Detroit, he comes across a girl named Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft), who is on the run and has some kind of dark entity inhabiting her body. Rachel has seen Dick in her dreams, and when she recognizes him she becomes convinced that they were meant to find each other. On the other side of the world, in Austria, a woman named Kory Anders (Anna Diop) awakens in a crashed car with no memory of who she is. She's got the European mob on her tail, and as she begins piecing things back together, she learns that she, too, is hunting Rachel Roth, for reasons unknown.

Titans really is an ensemble show, with no one clear cut main character. Anyone familiar with the Teen Titans comics or cartoons understands that these three characters are central players on the titular superhero team. Dick is Robin, Rachel is the empath called Raven, and Kory Anders is actually the alien known as Starfire. A fourth character, Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), is only glimpsed in the episode's closing moments. One can reasonably assume that all these characters will eventually come together as a group to combat the mysterious villains of the series. But, for now, the characters are scattered across the world, and the story unfurls as a mystery that raises more questions than it supplies answers.

To be completely fair, the show's darker tone is actually appropriate, given the story that the writers have chosen to tackle. Rachel is clearly being set up as the driving narrative force. Everyone seems to want her for their own reasons. In a shocking moment early in the episode, Rachel learns that the woman she's always believed to be her mother actually isn't—a split second before that woman is killed in front of her. On the run, Rachel is confused, hurt, and alone. To go from this kind of darkness (a darkness which is present in the character even in the comics, mind you) to puns and quips would be tonally uneven. Instead, the writers choose to double down on the dark and mysterious, and the end result is a compelling hour of viewing, tinged with elements of horror, that manages to reinvent these characters in new and interesting ways, which is the secret ingredient to any adaptation.

The thing that surprised me most was the acting. It is simply top notch. These are younger actors and actresses carrying the narrative weight of a really mature show. Teagan Croft and Anna Diop deliver breakout performances as the desperate Rachel and stunning-but-deadly Kory, respectively. Brenton Thwaites turns Dick Grayson into a haunted, devastated figure trying to recover from the trauma of having lived in the shadow of the Bat. It's too early to tell where things are going to go from here. But for someone like me, who has been accustomed to these characters for years, the unpredictability is intriguing, wholly unexpected, and very much welcome.

I haven't dipped into their world since 2003's Teen Titans cartoon. Now, over a decade later, I find the characters all grown up and trying to deal with personal issues that someone should have flagged for them years ago. In a way, it's as if they have grown up alongside me, and now we're starting to reconnect, all older and probably a bit more jaded than we'd like to admit, trying to make sense of personal traumas and failed relationships, looking for ways forward that allow us to avoid punching as many people in the face as we did in the past.

Venom (Review)

Venom is a movie I enjoyed in spite of myself. I tend to be one of those strange individuals who has never found a way to "switch off" my brain, at least not in the same way most of my friends seem to. When I sit down with a book or to watch a movie, the synapses fire up and I tend to walk away having felt deeply about what I've just experienced, good or bad. I know what tends to make a "good" movie by critical standards. But there is also that peculiar storytelling beast that functions in the same way the old pulp stories used to, the kind of story that thumbs its nose to the highfalutin critical standards of the day all in the good name of fun. These types of stories a dime a dozen, to be sure, and most of them are just flat out bad and not worth your time. Yet, I walked away from Venom with the distinct feeling that this is a movie that channels the best of pulp fiction, a modern movie that tries not so much to break the mold as it does to conform to older, simpler styles of storytelling. To make very sure, I went back and saw it again. And to my surprise, I enjoyed the movie even more upon second viewing, when my expectations were a bit more mitigated.

Venom (2018)

I am not as in tune with Marvel Comics as I am with DC Comics. It's not that I'm a DC snob, I just grew up with DC's characters and know them a bit better. But I knew enough about Venom going into the film to have some background to the character. When the film begins, investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) has carved out a pretty good life in San Francisco. He's a big hit at the workplace, and he's even engaged to attorney Anne Weying (Michelle Williams). But after he takes advantage of his fiancé by snooping through her legal documents to get an inside scoop for an upcoming interview with one Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), he ends up getting both himself and Anne fired from their respective jobs. Anne calls off the engagement, and Eddie begins a downward spiral, blaming Drake for ruining his life and career.

The thing is, Drake isn't squeaky clean, and it turns out Eddie's gut feelings about him were spot-on. When a scientist in Drake's employ, Dora Skirth (Jenny Slate), realizes that her boss is actually insane, she turns to Eddie to help her expose him. Reluctant at first, Eddie finally gives in and agrees to lend a hand. Skirth helps him infiltrate Drake's company, the ironically named Life Foundation, and explains that Drake, a Darwinist with a god complex, has been experimenting with human beings and gooey alien life forms known as symbiotes. Drake's plan is to find a way for humans and symbiotes to coexist inside one body, making it possible for humans to finally colonize space. This is all par for the course when it comes to pulpy comic book plots. There's a big corporation with a great public face, secretly doing dastardly things that only the protagonist can expose.

But it's during Eddie's infiltration of Drake's company that things take a turn for the bizarre, as Eddie is actually exposed to one of the alien symbiotes. The creature begins to bond with him, acting as a kind of second personality. At this point the movie takes a sharp turn from the thriller genre into something more akin to horror. Eddie must learn to cope with the creature that now shares his body, and this creature is anything but warm and friendly. The symbiote, which calls itself "Venom," begins manifesting as a voice in Eddie's head. It is a vicious predator with a strong bloodlust. And to make things worse, Drake learns of Eddie's infiltration and sends a team of operators to recover the symbiote.

The moment Drake's goons locate Eddie, things go absolutely bonkers as Venom really cuts loose. It turns out the symbiote is much more than a voice in Eddie's head, and in order to keep its host alive, Venom manifests itself around Eddie's body as this monstrous creature with a penchant for biting off heads and licking things with an absurdly long tongue. Gruesome as it sounds, the movie tends to handle these scenes tastefully, choosing to leave much of the violence to the imagination, a more effective visual storytelling tactic. From here, Eddie and Venom learn to live with one another while working to stop Drake.

The plot is pretty threadbare. Again, the old pulp magazines come to mind here, as do classic body horror films like John Carpenter's The Thing. Venom wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and doesn't make any excuses for it. There are very few twists and turns, with the movie preferring to tell its story in a straightforward manner. This is an intelligent decision, because it allows the star to be front and center. And the truth is, the movie's strongest asset is Tom Hardy, and the filmmakers know this because there's nary a moment when Hardy isn't onscreen. I've enjoyed watching Hardy's work for years now, and there's no denying that he is an extremely talented actor. He's not a dullard off-screen, either. Just watch a couple of interviews with him and you'll see that he's pretty well read and is actually a thoughtful individual. His role as both Eddie Brock and the voice of Venom is one where he really gets to break out and have some fun. Watching his quirkiness become mania as he slowly realizes he's not alone in his own skin is worth the price of admission or an evening rental alone.

Though the story is by the numbers, this isn't to say that Venom is not a thoughtful film. It might come across as a bit surprising, but the film does have more on its mind than aliens and mad scientists. Eddie is presented as a kind of antihero (again a staple of the old pulp stories), willing to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his goals. And he learns some hard lessons along the way, such as when Anne breaks up with him. At a later point in the film, she tells him that what happened didn't happen because of Carlton Drake, but because Eddie did something very wrong. It's an intelligent move by the writers, turning what could easily have been a kind of B-movie revenge tale into a more introspective character piece. This, of course, comes back up again, as Venom reveals he has access to Eddie's thoughts and feelings. Through a series of hilarious exchanges with his darker half, Eddie actually comes out of things a better person. He learns to take responsibility for himself, to stop blaming others for situations he put himself in, to say "I'm sorry," and to actually mean it. If this is what symbiotes do for us, then I can think of a handful of people I'd like to infect with one. But if I did that, I'd probably want to consider taking one for myself, too.

Venom is never going to go down in history as being one of the greatest films of all time. It's not fair to judge it on those terms either, when it very clearly is not concerned with trying to be the next Citizen Kane or Titanic. Instead, Venom is a smaller comic book movie that is content having its fun, and letting its leading man turn out a wacky dual performance. It's the movie equivalent of one of those little mints you pick up as you're leaving your favorite restaurant. Dissolving quick on the tongue, it's gone by the time you make it back to the car. You won't even remember it by the time you get home. But for the few moments it was there, it appealed to a variety of tastes and sensations, and you'll think of it again and likely crave it the next time you see an advertisement for the restaurant. I probably won't think much more about Venom in the coming months, but if there's a sequel, I'll likely be front and center just to see what kind of eccentric, oddball thing Tom Hardy is going to do next.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown (Review)

The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017)

The Ballad of Lefty Brown is one of the better films I've seen in recent memory. An unexpectedly moving and emotionally powerful movie, shot through with pathos and humor, Bill Pullman gives an extraordinary performance as the dimwitted titular protagonist, who is more resourceful than anyone gives him credit for. The traditional western would keep Lefty in the role of bumbling sidekick, while Peter Fonda's commanding presence as traditional cowboy figure and newly-elected senator Edward Johnson takes the lead. Suffice to say, Lefty ain't dripping in finesse. And that's okay with him, because he's simple and has a good friend in Edward, and that's all he really cares about in this life. But early in the film, Edward is murdered, prompting Lefty to take it upon himself to hunt down the killers and avenge his longtime friend. The only problem is that Lefty is seen as a bit of a nuisance and all-around miserable person by pretty much everyone. Even Johnson's widow, Laura (Kathy Baker), believes that Lefty only stuck by her husband's side to pick up the scraps that Edward dropped, a kind of muncher too lazy to carve out a life of his own. The truth is that Edward was the only person to have ever given Lefty a chance, someone who, despite Lefty's slow demeanor and somewhat cowardly ways, saw him not as a bottom-feeder, but as an honest man who didn't ask for much, and therefore a true friend.

Lefty is remarkably self-aware, and knows that he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. At one point, when resolving to avenge his friend, he says, "My word, it ain't worth much. But on this it is." And this pretty much becomes the film's thesis. Lefty is an underdog in the truest sense of the word. Everyone has counted him out before the story even begins. But through sheer willpower alone, Lefty rises above his baser nature to ensure that justice for Edward is carried out. It isn't pretty, and he makes just as many mistakes as he gets things right, but this is a film that reminds viewers that there is something to be said for bravery and tenacity and doggedness when the right thing is at stake. Where everyone else in the film falters, Lefty stays the course, because he believes in something that is good and right and true. I imagine that the friend spoken of in Proverbs 18:24, the one who sticks closer than a brother, probably looks a lot like Lefty Brown. This is a film about friendship and loss and the underdog. But more than anything, this is a film about the relentless pursuit of justice. It would be a mistake to characterize it as a revenge tale. Lefty doesn't go hunting the bad guys because they killed his best friend. He goes after them because what they did was wrong, plain and simple, and a good man was killed who didn't deserve it, and nobody else wants to see anything done about it.

The truth is that every one of us probably knows a Lefty Brown. That simple person who's a bit slower than we are, who, whether we want to admit it or not, is good to have around if only to give us the boost of ego we need in the moments we're lacking self-confidence. Any guy who managed to survive high school has learned the locker room lesson that there's always going to be somebody bigger. So some of the more average guys decide to pick on the smaller guy to pack on that extra inch of confidence—it is my firm conviction that these are the guys who become the assholes of the world. Lefty is clearly the smaller guy in this scenario, and this is how everyone seems to think of him. The guy who is easy to make the butt of many a joke because he seems just a little too dumb to realize when he's being made fun of. But Lefty isn't to be underestimated; on the contrary, it isn't that he doesn't know when he's being made fun of, it's actually that he's just a little too kind-hearted to try and think up a comeback. The reason he keeps silent is probably because he's wondering why someone doesn't have anything better to do than take jabs at him. And though those locker room experiences follow us well beyond high school, at some point the normal person drops the jokes because—surprise, surprise—no one really cares, and because you know that if you keep picking on the smaller guy, one day the smaller guy's liable to snap and beat you. The Ballad of Lefty Brown is what happens when the smaller guy snaps. Again, it isn't pretty. But it's cathartic. And it's glorious.

At film's end, the villain ultimately responsible for Edward's death, James Bierce (a devilishly good heel-turn by none other than Jim Caviezel), is still bragging, even while the noose is being slipped around his neck. "Years from now," he says, "there'll be statues of me everywhere in Montana. It's not easy, but I did my job. Years from now, they'll be thanking me for it." The less eloquent Lefty thinks for a second, then responds plainly, "Think so? I reckon all these folks'll remember's seeing you hang."

There was a point or two in the film I was pretty close to tears, if only because I can think back to the Lefty Browns I've encountered in my own life. The people who were probably never as dumb as I wrote them off to be, who were genuine and honest people, whose ambitions were never to move and shake—clichéd and overrated motivations, anyway—but simply to help others and to be good friends, who talk plainly and call it as they see it, for better or for worse. People who were probably more than willing to, in Flannery O'Connor's words, shoot me everyday of my life out of love and genuine affection, to make sure that I never grew too big for my britches. Because they saw the bigger picture, and would have cared more about my spirit and my character than about making sure I got to see my own personal statues built in my own personal Montana.

Chances are, we all know somebody like Lefty Brown. If, by the time the credits roll, you step outside of yourself for just a moment and see those quiet, unassuming people in your life colored just a hue or two brighter, then that's two hours of time well spent.