There is a lot of dark humor in the movie. In one scene Tom Cruise's character chases his own eyes as they are rolling down a corridor. Then there are a lot of funny criminal type characters. The two best are played by Jason Antoon and Peter Stormare. In both cases the humor comes from some derange characteristic of the character. Making for very funny, but also very dark jokes. There is an expositional scene with an elderly woman played by Lois Smith in which they talk about some truly terrible things some of which are political. But the scene is hilarious. And it has one of the most weird character moments in the entire Spielberg's filmography. I'm not gonna spoil it. But I'm pretty sure you will notice it.
Acting-wise, big shout out has to come to the kids playing the main roles. The adults were all good professional actors. But those kids were something special. There is a famous shot from the movie where Alice played by Phoebe Ferro is looking intensely at the camera, giving the audience the necessary chills. When a child makes a face that makes you respect that child immediately, this is, in my opinion, a skill to praise. So bravo, Phoebe Ferro, Skyler Peters, Charlie Stover and Lorelei Mote. You are awesome!
Sir Kenneth Branagh! That's the end of the review. Just kidding. A Haunting In Venice is the new picture directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh which is a kind of a sub-genre of films of it's own. Branagh started his directorial career by directing a movie where he played the main role. And continued directing movies where he played the main roles ever since. Of course sometimes he might make a movie where he plays not the main character, like the 1992's Peter's Friends where Peter is played by Stephen Fry. And Branagh just has a very big role in it. And sometimes he plays in movies where he is not the director. Like in Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer all directed by Christopher Nolan. Of course lately he got himself directing jobs where he didn't cast himself what so ever. Like in Marvel's Thor ( where the actor was cast by Marvel ) or Disney's Cinderella where for obvious reasons a middle aged man cannot play the main character. But most of the time he plays the main character in the films he directs. It kind of became a meme at this point that if Branagh directs a film, most likely he plays the main character.
Of course if directors would not talk to each other, Avatar itself would not be made. See, motion capture was not a development for Avatar. Films like Peter Jackson's King Kong and scary "uncanny valley" cartoons of *Bobert Zemeckis, like the infamous Christmas film where all of the characters are played by Tom Hanks used motion capture. Gollumn from a movie that some people use as a marriage ring could be considered a motion capture creature. Even though it was much more manual. Hell, Titanic has motion capture. Terminator 2 has a form of motion capture. And it was made in 1992.
I can see how this kind of logic might work. There is lot bad press about various mistakes various woke people do. We all know the memes of rage induced screaming people yelling for this or that woke idea. Then there is a lot of woke people that support various kinds of censorship and people like Jordan Peterson that fight those attempts at censorship which I applaud. Pointing out the importance of Freedom Of Speech in the process. Which makes the woke seem less and less related to the word Freedom. To the point that people who do not understand words too well, start to associate Freedom with anti-wokeness. Not even considering that there is an equal freedom of speech for woke to say whatever they want to say as well.