Cinema Dispatch: Digger

October 7, 2026October 6, 2026 ~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Digger and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Boy howdy, is this a contentious one! I certainly wasn’t expecting the film to be so polarizing given the talent behind it, but this seems to have hit a lot of people the wrong way. I guess I should have seen it coming given how silly it was for the initial trailer to be about Tom Cruise’s career that also just so happens to end with a teaser for the movie, but I guess if you’re gonna go for the Oscar, you might as well go as big as possible. I’m certainly still looking forward to it, perhaps even more so now that it’s become such a huge miss with a lot of people! Will I be one of those who will find greatness in Tom Cruise’s latest attempt to prove he can do more than jump out of planes, or is this an absolute train wreck that can only happen at the highest levels of Hollywood talent and creative hubris? Let’s find out!!

As long as the world needs oil, there will be men like Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise); an oil baron with the world at his fingertips and the US President on speed dial. Now typically, a man with that kind of power is rarely put in difficult positions, but that all changes when the one thing he can’t control, Mother Nature, gives him and the rest of humanity a kick to the gonads as one of Digger’s extraction sites in Greenland explodes and releases an ice shelf that’s on a one-way path to Europe. Not exactly the best PR for an oil company, but Digger is not about to be buried in controversy when he still calls the shots and keeps the modern world spinning. Of course, it’s not going to be an easy game of 4-D chess as everyone, from his head of environmental safety (Riz Ahmed), to his sister with a Green Energy company (Sandra Hüller), and even the very cranky President of the United States (John Goodman) is breathing down his neck to either fix the problem or make it someone else’s. With the facts of the situation so overwhelmingly against him, can Digger steer the narrative away from his company’s failings and make himself the hero of this crisis? Just how much damage can be expected from this icey torpedo of death, and is there any hope of stopping this disaster before it’s too late? Is this something that can be fixed with a few folksy stories about his grand-dad, because Digger certainly has a lot of those!

“Back in my day, a global catastrophe was just another word for opportunity! Now someone get my submarine before we’re all inhaling salt water and fish urine!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Venom

October 8, 2018September 14, 2020 ~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

VENOMCD0

Venom and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

FINALLY!! I have been waiting so long for this movie to come out, especially with the last few weeks being miserable times doing these reviews. None of this wish washy crap where I am not savvy enough to understand the BRILLIANCE of movies like Mandy, Assassination Nation, and A Star is Born! None of the dull tedium of films like Night School or the disappointingly wasteful Hell Fest! I’m done with those! Give me something I can wrap my head around! Something I can easily size up and bash with a baseball bat for some cheap laughs and maybe some a bit of insight! Whether this is good or bad (STRONGLY leaning towards the latter if the trailers are any indication), I can’t imagine I’ll have to spend three hours hemming and hawing about the best way to describe why I’m the ONE critic out there who “doesn’t get it” because this is the kind of movie that I’m sure we’ll ALL have no problem understanding! It’s a sad testament to the times we’re living in that a Sony Spider-Man movie (except maybe not?) is what I consider a grounding influence in my life, but I’m not the one who voted for any of these jerks, nor did I have anything to do with the September release schedule! Anyway, does Venom actually turn out to be a fun adventure with one of Spider-Man’s most infamous foes, or did Sony WAY overestimate their ability to make another super hero movie after Disney held their hand on the last one? Let’s find out!!

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is your typical movie journalist! He’s on the streets looking for the REAL news and has an axe to grind against THE MAN! So much so that he finds dirt on some smug billionaire jerk named Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) who you’d THINK everyone would realize is bad just from the name, but Eddie’s got the story and springs these questions on him during an interview! A few problems though. First, this is the kind of billionaire who can get people fired from newspapers even if they DON’T run with the story, and second… well he got the dirt by hacking the computer of his girlfriend Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) who I THINK was a lawyer at the firm that Mr. Drake was employing, so she gets the boot too. Well THAT certainly backfired for poor privacy invading Eddie! Now no one will hire him because… I guess there’s NO outlet in existence that wants to hire someone who’s seemingly as competent as Eddie is (ESPECIALLY since he’s desperate and ready to work for cheap) and he’s just kind of sitting around depressed in his apartment; hoping his girlfriend will come back to him (she won’t) and hoping that his neighbor will turn down the loud music (he won’t). Oh, and I think there’s something to do with aliens? Yeah, apparently Mr. Drake had a spaceship that crashed but also had some alien lifeforms on it; namely The Symbiotes. These giant piles of goo turn out to be rather dangerous as we learn when Mr. Drake starts siccing them on human subjects. One of the scientists (Jenny Slate) doesn’t recall this being in her job description so she reaches out to Eddie who reluctantly goes to the facility with her after hours, and sure enough one of the Symbiotes escapes and attaches itself to Eddie. Eventually it reveals itself to be known simply as Venom and the two of them need to work together; otherwise the EVIL MR. DRAKE will find them and… I guess do even MORE evil experiments on them! Can Eddie and Venom uncover whatever it is that Drake has planned for humanity and the Symbiotes? What exactly is Venom’s endgame here, and does it require Eddie to stay alive for that much longer? What chances does Eddie have for reuniting with Anne now that there’s a third slimy wheel in the mix? WHAT THE HELL IS TALKING ABOUT WHEN HE SAYS TURD IN THE WIND!?

VENOMCD1 — “Well on MY planet, turds are as light as a feather and could EASILY start rolling from a stiff breeze! Now shut up as I eat your eyeballs!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

December 23, 2016September 8, 2020 ~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Gareth Edwards

In what will surely be a yearly tradition until the day we all die, Disney has given us our holiday present in the form of another Star Wars movie. We’re only at two so far which means they PROBABLY aren’t gonna start half-assing these just yet, and in fact this one seems to be willing to take a few more risks than what we would normally expect from franchise features like this. Okay, the fact that it’s a one-time spin off means that they’re only so much damage this can do if it blows up in their faces, but the tone of the trailers and the nature of the story they’re telling at least inspires some hope that the franchise has gotten so big that they’re willing to let it take some chances. Does this experiment in growing the series turn out to be a total success, or will this somehow be the worst prequel yet? Okay, I kind of doubt that’s even possible, but you never know!

The movie begins a long time ago in a galaxy far far away where little Jyn Erso (Beau Gadsdon) has her life completely uprooted when her family is found by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) who is a high ranking member of the galactic empire. Why did this guy hunt halfway around the galaxy for them? Well it turns out that Jyn’s father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) is an Empire scientist who defected and they need him back to finish some super weapon they’re working on. The good news is that Jyn manages to escape the Empire with the help of a family friend Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). The bad news is that her mother (Valene Kane) got killed in the process and dear old dad got kidnapped. Flash forward to sometime later where we meet grown up Jyn (Felicity Jones) who’s been rebellious youth-ing all around the galaxy and winds up at Rebel headquarters where they have a proposition for her. Go with the rebel agent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to find her father and stop him from finishing the Death Star as he seems to be looking for a way out once again. Okay, it’s not QUITE that simple, but that’s the basic idea of what they’re trying to do! Anyway, they’ll point her in the right direction in the hopes that her skills and connections will kill two birds with one stone; she gets her dad back and they get to stop the Space Nuke from being completed. Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems and there’s plenty of treachery to go around as the mission becomes only more difficult once the Empire get wind of what they might be up to. Can Jyn save her farther before the Empire find out if he’s been undercutting their progress on the super weapon this entire time? Does Cassian have a hidden agenda that he’s not telling Jyn about? On a scale of one to Vader, how screwed are they?

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