RogerEbert.com — Venom
“Venom” isn’t quite the unmitigated disaster you’ve heard it is, but it’s also not the optimal use of its prodigious talent. Tom Hardy gives it his all, as always, in the title role as the Marvel Comics villain. (Although here, in his origin story, he’s more of an amusingly menacing anti-hero.) Director Ruben Fleischer’s action-comedy works best in the moments when Hardy’s character, Eddie Brock, is bickering with the gooey alien being that’s taken over his body. I laughed quite a bit, but overall the film is a tonal mess, and it’s surprisingly inscrutable given that it was shot by the supremely gifted cinematographer Matthew Libatique. My mixed review, at RogerEbert.com.