Morbius (2022)

Here we have a film in which Jared Leto has to play a privileged guy who gets himself into a position where he can abuse the trust of people around him and be creepy and menacing to anyone he decides to target. No, it’s not Jared: A True Story. It is Morbius, another superhero film given some new clothes to wear, and also another film trying to forge connections to the Spider-Man movies.

Leto plays Dr. Michael Morbius, a great scientist who has spent years trying to cure the debilitating disease that has afflicted him. If he does find a cure then he can also help his good friend, Milo (Matt Smith). As his disease is blood-related, Morbius ends up trying some radical work with vampire bats. And he gets a successful result. Unfortunately, it also turns him into a blood-craving man-bat. That is all well and good when it comes to his strength, athleticism, speed, and a new sense of echo location. It isn’t so good when he needs to feed. Maybe synthetic blood will help him, for a while anyway, but it isn’t long until exsanguinated bodies start showing up. And Morbius becomes public enemy number one, despite him doubting that he did anything wrong.

For the basics of this kind of movie, Morbius is perfectly fine. The origin story is enjoyable enough, there are decent effects dotted throughout, and a couple of action sequences work well. Leto works well in a main role that seems to fit him very well, and there are even a couple of moments that tap into the potential for some horror movie moments.

The script, written by Matt Sazama and Burt Sharpless, is decent, if fairly predictable, and I have to admit to enjoying the films, like this and the Venom movies, that have recently packaged darker and deadlier characters into movies that remain available to a surprisingly wide viewer demographic. I know that a lot of people disagree, and I also wouldn’t mind seeing darker riffs on this material, but the compromises often seem to give these films a sense of fun that they would otherwise be lacking. Morbius is actually fun at times, especially when Matt Smith gets to cut loose, and I never thought I would say that.

Director Daniel Espinosa spoils things though, deciding to overload some sequences with details and CGI that don’t really make sense. Scenes have colour added to them, but it soon feels like you’re watching the afterglow of someone drawing an image with a sparkler in a dark room. Although I did say that a couple of the action sequences work well, others don’t. You get no true feeling of danger, and there are a couple of occasions that have things happening that are only explained after you have tried to figure out what is going on (which is fine for plotting, not so good with action beats).

I have already said that Leto works well in the main role, but it feels like such a good fit for him that I would be astonished if he failed. Maybe he was just happy to have a vehicle that didn’t have him portraying the worst onscreen Joker ever, or maybe he just managed to find his character very easily. Smith is solid, although his character arc could not be any more obvious. The second half allows him to shine, but I wish he could have been allowed to do even more. Adria Arjona is a good female lead, a colleague/friend of Morbius, and Tyrese Gibson does just fine as a cop one step behind the unfolding danger. There’s also a cameo at the end that is well worth sticking around for, although I had been hoping another character might be introduced here (someone who would make complete sense in this storyline).

Although not great, and I don’t know anyone who expected this to be great, Morbius is enjoyable and entertaining for most of its runtime, and the fact that the runtime is also about 104 minutes is also a plus.

6/10

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Last Night In Soho (2021)

Edgar Wright is such a good film-maker that it sometimes makes me sad that he doesn't get more recognition. Oh, he has plenty of fans, and most people love at least one of "the Cornetto trilogy" movies, but he has noticeably grown over the past decade or so into someone who can do more than cram a film full of jokes and references. Not that there is anything wrong with his films that are crammed full of jokes and references (indeed, both Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz will remain very near the top of any list I make of my favourite films for a long time to come). Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was a move away from what he had done before, although it was equally overstuffed with details and gags in every scenes. Baby Driver was a fantastic surprise, a melding of visuals with soundtrack choices that also made time for some superb car stunt work. And you should all really check out his wonderful documentary on Sparks. But Last Night In Soho . . . well, it may just be in contention for his best work yet.

Thomasin McKenzie plays Eloise, a country girl who moves to London for the chance to study fashion design. Having been in love with the London that so many people picture from the "swinging '60s", Eloise soon discovers that the modern city is a different entity from what it once was. Thankfully, she also discovers a nocturnal window into the London of the past, a world in which she connects to the confident and lovely Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a wannabe singer who seems absolutely certain that she will one day be a star. As things start to take a dark turn for Sandie, Eloise finds her nerves becoming increasingly frayed. Considering that Eloise still occasionally has visions of her deceased mother, who committed suicide when she was a little girl, having her nerves frayed is not good for her, or for those around her.

Co-written by Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Last Night In Soho is, in a lot of ways, a case of style over substance, but a) it's hard to complain when the style is so gorgeous, and b) the substance that IS here is well worth your time. People have tried to say this is Wright emulating a giallo film, but his touchstones here seem to be the likes of Vertigo, The Tenant, the films of Hammer and Pete Walker (to name a few main influences), and a pinch of Lucio Fulci. And it's worth noting that the horror develops throughout the runtime. This isn't a film to watch for jump scares and gory deaths, it's one to watch and enjoy for ratcheting tension and insanity.

Visually stunning, mirrors are used often, and used brilliantly, an era of London is recreated here that draws viewers in as easily as it draws in Eloise. It's all bright lights, groovy fashions, cool people, and ear-tickling music. The editing is flawless, complementing the two central performances as the leads reflect one another, and grow more in sync, and the whole film is an immersive, at times dizzying, experience.

Wright and co. arguably saved themselves a lot of trouble by casting so cannily though. I cannot say enough good things about McKenzie and Taylor-Joy, the former all awkward shyness and wide-eyed innocence while the latter acts as a white rabbit leading everyone to a wonderland that soon starts to crack and fall apart. Matt Smith is also very good, playing a man named Jack who soon reveals his true colours while acting as if he can do great things for Sandie. Then you have Diana Rigg, excelling in a final film role, a landlady named Ms Collins, that uses her brilliantly and allows her to do much more than just play someone available to reminisce about "the good old days". Michael Ajao, playing a nice young lad named John, and Synnove Karlsen, playing a not-so-nice fellow student named Jocasta, are both good, but the added pleasure comes from the supporting turns from Terence Stamp, still able to exude cool, menace, and a general swagger that reminds you of everything he has done before, and Rita Tushingham, an actress strongly associated with '60s British cinema (and who starred in a strangely similar cinematic fairytale-gone-awry entitled Straight On Till Morning). It's also good to see Pauline McLynn, who will forever be Mrs. Doyle to me, in any film role, however small, and she just adds to the quality of the performances on display here with her turn as a pub landlady named Carol.

So many people will take so many different things from this, and I have seen complaints about the writing and the third act developments, but all I can do is give it the highest recommendation possible. It feels, to me, like a long way of exploring that classic "you can never go home again" idea, albeit for a character attached to somewhere that was never her home in the first place. It also seems to underline a point so many people seem to miss nowadays, about accepting a time/place/source of art while being able to acknowledge that there were massive problems. You can wear rose-tinted glasses if you want to, but it's impossible to constantly ignore the problematic elements, to put it mildly, that have accompanied so many main chapters in our history, but being aware of them doesn't mean we have to then throw things we love into a social dustbin.

The more I watch this, the more I love it. That happens with most Edgar Wright movies I watch, to be fair, but this one has something that gives it a slight edge over a lot of his other work. It has a bit more going on below the surface, despite that perhaps being harder to notice with the overdose of style throughout. I hope others end up enjoying it almost as much as I did. 

10/10

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Netflix And Chill: His House (2020)

If you're the kind of person who believes that the UK is being swarmed by "illegal immigrants", all aiming to come here because the system is so easy to play, and immediately being handed a 7-bedroom house and £500 a week, then His House is definitely not the film for you. This depicts the lead characters, a pair of asylum seekers, as real people with very real horror in their lives. It then adds some more horror, a bit of cinematic horror, and starts to intertwine things together in a way that endangers both of their lives.

Sope Dirisu is Bol Majur and Wunmi Mosaku is Rial Majur. They have travelled together from a country where ongoing war has cost the lives of too many already. It wasn't always just the two of them either. A child was lost along the way. Having waited to have their case processed, Bol and Rial are given a small house to live in, with numerous conditions to their stay (as their case goes through the next stage) and a weekly sum of £74/week to live on. It seems like a great new start for them. But there's something else in their new home, a supernatural force that knows exactly how to frighten and torture them. If they cannot defeat it, they will lose everything.

Based on a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables, His House is a feature debut from writer-director Remi Weekes, who has a number of shorts to his credit from just over the past decade. It's not only a superb feature debut, it's a superb horror movie. It mixes together the horror and the journey to seek asylum so well that it's a reminder of just how effectively the genre can be used against a backdrop of thought-provoking social commentary. There is nothing wrong with a horror movie that has a maniac going all stabby on horny teens, but there is equally nothing wrong with a horror movie that has a bit more to say alongside some solid scares.

Visually intriguing throughout, Weekes keeps things varied as we are shown scenes of the dangerous journey to the UK, scenes of Bol and Rial trying to integrate into a local community that doesn't seem to want them there, and scenes of the house becoming more creepy, lively, and damaged. Things may grow increasingly dark as the story unfolds, but even daylight does not guarantee safety. We see that in the sun-drenched scenes of a war-torn landscape, we see it as our leads encounter "neighbours", and there's no escape from a nightmare that could end lives in a couple of different ways, either by destroying the Majurs physically or resulting in them losing their status in the UK, which would lead to them being deported back to somewhere they would be much less likely to survive.

Dirisu and Mosaku are both excellent in their roles, believably earnest and worried about their futures, trying to work things out within an environment that places extra restrictions on their freedoms (as they wait in hope for a real freedom that will allow them to finally relax). The full story of their journey to the UK, revealed in flashback throughout the film, doesn't really change how well-placed they are as lead characters, because you've taken a liking to them from the earliest scenes, and you can consider how desperate anyone escaping their situation could be. Matt Smith gives great support in the role of Mark, the liaison officer who shows them to their new home and seems to hope for their success. There are other, no less important, characters who appear, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourself.

Loaded with poignancy and real consideration, and with a script that emphasises the language used to keep things officious at all times, even as people may be almost crying out for a more human, a more empathetic, approach to their situation, His House is one of the best films of the year, a timely one at that, and certainly the best horror movie.

9/10

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