Borbius

Morbius shares a lot in commen with its Sony Spiderman(less)verse cousin Venom in that its messy, unfocused and has clearly been hacked to bits in the editing room. What it doesn't have is the charm of Tom Hardy arguing with himself and doing his impression of Jim Carey in The Mask.

What you get instead is a passable but drab rendition of a mid nineties comic book movie, think way short of a Blade but better than a Spawn. Frustratingly, there are seeds of a much better movie here had the filmmakers invested the time in developing any of the threads they have going on. There is some actually quite gruesome body horror on show (Matt Smith was made for it) and had they leaned into it a bit more we could have had a genuinely unique superhero flick on our hands. There is also an interesting gothic tragedy buried in there but Morbius and best friend Loxias relationship is left pitifully underdeveloped so their parting of ways means nothing to the viewer. The script really needed to spend more time on hammering home their closeness and less on forcing a pointless romance with a female colleague. They may as well of put up some text on screen saying, "look Morbius is just FRIENDS with another guy OK, there's nothing gay going on there relax."

The film isn't a complete disaster and Leto does a pretty good job of giving Michael some personality but the absence of any meaningful stakes leads to a fairly boring hour and a half with the whole thing feeling like something Sony wanted to get out the way in their quest for some sort of team up movie in the future.

5 Morbintimes out of 10.

Comments

Whisky in the Jar

Glenrothan has been sold as "a love letter to Scotland" and given that it features two of Scotland's most accomplished actors, whisky, folk music and stunning landscape shots, it's hard to argue. Is it anything more than that? Not really, but maybe that's OK. Alan Cumming and Brian Cox (who also directs) are Donal and Sandy Nairn, estranged brothers and heirs to a beloved whisky distillery. Growing up, big brother Sandy was desperate to leave their idyllic village and its distillery behind, while Donal wanted to be nowhere else. Family issues resulted in them both leading the life that the other used to dream of, as Donal left for America and Sandy took over the family business when their father's health began to fail. When his blues bar burns down, Donal makes his first trip back to Scotland in forty years, accompanying his daughter and granddaughter to visit his ailing brother. A quick look at the trailer tells you everything you need to know about Glenroth...

Killing in the Name of

Mortal Kombat II is, unsurprisingly, a sequel to 2021's Mortal Kombat and the latest attempt to adapt the long running fighting game franchise for the big screen. There has been a bit of a shift in Hollywood over the five years since the last instalment and this film has a very different attitude. Gone is the attempt to "serious-up" the material as MKII fully embraces its dumb its video game roots. It still isn't exactly good, but at least this time round it's bad in an enjoyable way. For those unfamiliar with the games, they are based around a fighting tournament that decides if an evil empire from another dimension, or "realm", gets to take over Earth. Think "Enter the Dragon" with superpowers and a hefty dose of inspiration from "Big Trouble in Little China". In terms of this movie, eight people from Earth take turns fighting eight people from "Outworld". Sounds simple enough but the script makes no attempt to create a...

Listening to the Sounds in Silence

The tagline for breakout indie horror hit Undertone is, "The Scariest Movie You'll Ever Hear". This declaration sets out the film's stall as a uniquely audio based horror, and that is exactly what it delivers. The result is something that will chill some people to the bone and leave others falling asleep in their seats. Originally made for a meagre $500,000, the film takes place entirely in one location (director Ian Tuason's childhood home) and centres on podcaster Ivy, played with impressive range by Nina Kiri. Ivy is caring for her dying mother (the only other person who appears onscreen) so has to wait until the early hours of the morning to record her paranormal podcast with friend Justin (the voice of Adam DiMarco). She plays the role of sceptic to Justin's believer but her rationality is tested when her cohost begins playing some eerie audio files he received from an anonymous listener. Although Undertone isn't a found footage film, it very much t...

Wasted Men

From Scum to Starred Up, neither the big nor small screen are short of brutally frank depictions of life behind British bars. Wasteman adds a taut, modern take to the pile and shows that life isn't getting any easier inside. Philip Barantini (creator of Boiling Point and Adolescence) is on board as a producer so you know it's going to feel real and the Safdie brothers were at one point attached to direct, so you know it's going to be gut-clenchingly tense. It doesn't disappoint on either front. David Jonsson plays long term convict Taylor. A timid drug addict, he cuts the hair of the top-dog inmates in return for a regular fix and is existing rather than living as the years of his sentence tick by when he gets some unexpected news. Prison overcrowding means he is up for early release, provided he can keep his nose clean for a couple of weeks, something made increasingly tricky by the arrival of his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth). Dee encourages Taylor to make contact wit...

Hell to Pay

They Will Kill You begins with a soaking wet Zazie Beetz waiting to start her maid job at swanky apartment building, The Virgil. Her character Asia is a former convict who has no idea her new employers are devil worshipers who sacrifice their staff to Lucifer. The building residents have no idea that Asia is actually there for reasons other than a steady paycheque and is not about to go gently into that good night. The touch paper is soon lit on a relentless blend of slapstick horror action that leaves little room for you to catch your breath across its ninety minute odd runtime. The most obvious comparison here is to 2019's Ready or Not and its sequel (which coincidentally released one week before this film), where an unsuspecting bride is left fighting for her life when her wealthy in-laws opt to make her a human sacrifice. While They Will Kill You shares that movie's comedic spirit we are much deeper into supernatural territory here. The grand old building and seemingly ...

Husband and Strife

If the purpose of cinema is to make the audience feel something, then few films succeed as completely as The Drama. The fact that said feeling is one of wanting to curl up and die of awkwardness shouldn't even be taken as a warning. Like a masochist munching down on a giant bowl of ghost peppers, you will likely find every bite delicious. Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play soon to be married couple Charlie and Emma. They have the picture perfect relationship. They have successful jobs, a beautiful Boston apartment and look like Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. Little differences in their attitudes toward a wedding dance rehearsal and their potentially drug smoking DJ hint they may not be completely on the same page, and when a drunken game leads to Emma disclosing something from her past, their relationship experiences some severe turbulence. It's tricky to fully discuss The Drama without spoiling Emma's revelation (and it absolutely should not be spoiled), but it points to ...

You Screen, I Scream

The worst thing about Scream 7 isn't actually the film itself. It's the at best cowardly, actions of production company Spyglass Media who fired the star of the previous two films, Melissa Barrera, for daring to have an opinion on genocide. In addition to leaving an icky taste in the mouth, this move cost them fellow star Jenna Ortega and the guy who was supposed to direct the seventh instalment Christopher Landon, resulting in a return to the drawing board to completely rework the film. The only actually good thing about Scream 7 is also nothing to do with the actual film. Series mainstay Neve Campbell missed the previous instalment after producers lowballed her, but the production chaos of their own making means they've had to go crawling back. So Neve returns with a reported $7 million payday, a producer credit and a story based solely around how legendary her character Sydney is. Go her. The actual film doesn't warrant much discussion at all, given it does little mo...

Fight For Your Right

The debate about the "Great American Novel" (a book that encapsulates the spirit and character of the United States) continues to rage. While One Battle After Another is loosely inspired by a book (Thomas Pynchon's Vineland), it feels like Paul Thomas Anderson's second stab, after "There Will Be Blood", at crafting the Great American Movie. This is a very different beast to his 2007 masterpiece, both in setting and tone, but is just as epic and wide reaching in its own way. Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is the leader of militant revolutionary group "The French 75" and her partner Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the team explosive expert. The movie opens with the self-styled freedom fighters breaking a bunch of detained immigrants out of a holding camp. This brings them into the crosshairs of Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw who begins pursuing the group. After being arrested, Perfidia disappears, leaving Pat to raise their baby daughter in hi...

The Bourne IT

The set up for The Amateur is a well worn one, a man loses his wife in a terrorist attack and goes on a mission of revenge. The twist is, that while Rami Malek does play a man with a particular set of skills, they aren't the ones you would expect. Charlie Heller is a socially awkward CIA cryptographer with precisely zero fighting ability and no experience using firearms. He is though, a technological genious who invented half the agencies cyber security and can track and predict patterns like a computer. When his blatantly shady boss, played with smug glee by Holt Mccallany, refuses to act on Charlie's info about the killers he blackmails him for some training and the green light to pursue the perpetrators himself. The two main questions are, can the mild mannered tech guy thrive in the field and is this twist on the formulae enough to carry a fairly by the numbers espionage thriller? The answer to both is, pretty much, yes. Malek is tailor made for roles like this and it'...

Ghostbusted

Ghostbusters : Frozen Empire continues the trend of diminishing returns from Ghostbusters as a franchise. Worse, it's the first time a 'Busters film has fallen into outright bad territory. After the classic 1984 original 1989's sequel was considered a disappointment (although it raked it in at the box office) but still had the charisma of its predecessors iconic cast. The female led reboot in 2016 was fun action comedy but didn't stand up the legendary original. In 2021 they started again with Afterlife, pitching Ghostbusters as Stranger Things in order to move things to a small town and test the water without having to bust the bank. Frozen Empire is a direct sequel to that film (and by extension the first two) but feels like little more than a corporate exercise in mud flinging to see what sticks. We start off with a ghost chase through New York, where Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her kids Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Gary Grooberson (Pa...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog