Monthly Archives: April 2022

Column, Midwest Film Journal

It’s Gonna Be Bay: The Rock

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

They say that no man is an island but Michael Bay seems to stand alone in the realm of action movies. Not only is he one of the most well-known directors of the genre but his explosion-heavy style of filmmaking is so recognizable, it’s colloquially known as “Bayhem”, as to convey the controlled chaos exhibited in his films. Even before his Transformers pentalogy, the one-two punch of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor codified Bay’s penchant for star-spangled pyrotechnics and chest-puffed melodramatics in indiscreet fashion. If these two films sum up Bayhem, then 1996’s The Rock could fittingly be seen as “proto-Bayhem”, where the director was still figuring out how he wanted to commit action to celluloid without having the same tricks on which to fall back. Most consider it his finest achievement and I’d be hard pressed to disagree.

After a title card with emblazoned letters shooting towards the screen, the movie opens on Ed Harris’s Brigadier General Francis Hummel as he suits up in full military garb to set flowers on his wife’s headstone. As he walks among the tombstones, an American flag is being carefully folded in slow-motion as the rain beats down on a soldier’s casket. The color grading is so blue in this opening sequence, it makes both Ozark and Tobias Fünke envious. It turns out Hummel has a dangerous plan in place: to steal a cadre of missiles loaded with a deadly nerve gas known as “VX” and threaten to launch them on American soil unless the US government pays reparations to the families of fallen Marines with whom he served. Along with a band of new recruits, he plans to set up shop on Alcatraz Island (whose nickname gives the film its title) and take tourists hostage as a contingency.

Amid a $100 million demand and tight timeframe to complete the deal, the Department of Defense calls forth an unlikely pair of foils for Hummel. The first is Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), a self-described “chemical superfreak” who helps the FBI defuse “care packages” loaded with goodies like C4 explosives and sarin gas. The second is John Mason (Sean Connery), an off-the-books inmate who is allegedly the only person to ever escape The Rock during its days as a prison. Their combined knowledge of how to neutralize the VX-loaded missiles and how to move about the island undetected by Hummel’s men, backed by a Navy SEAL team, represents the US government’s best shot at stopping Hummel before time runs out.

The Rock succeeds where other Bay endeavors fail because he properly sets up the characters, the scenario and the stakes before the inevitable action setpieces kick into gear. The fundamentals of an action classic are set up beautifully in the first act: an empathetic villain, a credible threat, a ticking clock, a pair of underdogs and men desperate to one-up each other in the machismo department whenever possible. Pushing the urgency is an iconic musical score from Nick Glennie-Smith and Hans Zimmer, which has moments of reverence with snare taps and mournful trumpet but also pulsates with intense strings and crashing cymbals. It’s the kind of soundtrack that’s difficult to listen to and not feel like whatever mundane activity you’re doing is the most important task the American people have ever asked you to carry out.

There are plenty of stock military characters in The Rock, from the no-nonsense commander of the Navy SEAL team to the no-nonsense Major who plays sidekick to Hummel on the island. What allows the movie to distinguish itself among scores of actioners is in the unique characters that it sets up outside the standard tough guys. Cage’s Goodspeed is such a wimp, he chooses “friggin'” and “a-hole” over traditional curse words, even in situations when it makes no sense to censor oneself. He’s a Beatlemaniac who we first see wasting time on a mildly incendiary Rube Goldberg contraption before being called to investigate a suspicious package. Bay even throws in a pregnant fiancee who has literally no agency in the movie but makes Goodspeed’s survival to the very end even more of a priority than it would have been already.

Then we have Mason, a charming and ruthlessly intelligent codger whose agreement with the FBI feels tenuous and secondary to his desire to become reacquainted with his estranged daughter. We get the sense early on that he’s been a pawn between governments for decades and would probably be a free man if he wasn’t so important for political gamesmanship. Since he’s played by Sean Connery, it’s also fun to hear him say things like “successfully” and “San Francisco” in his quintessential Scottish accent. At one point, Mason requests “a suite, a shower, a shave and a suit” and I can only assume uncredited screenwriter Quentin Tarantino won a bet against the three credited screenwriters about how long an alliteration he could sneak into the script.

Of course it comes down to Goodspeed and Mason defeating these highly-trained Marines on their own and Goodspeed would be thrilled with the chemistry that Cage and Connery have together. It’s a classic pairing of opposites: an eccentric wuss who revels in a life of beige-tinted boredom and a hardened Army man who’s looking for action after toiling away in prison for most of his life. Goodspeed schools Mason in exactly how VX can waste any living organism in 90 seconds while Mason shows Goodspeed how to prep scuba gear without fumbling around with it. Cage gets the talkier role and we’re all the better for it: at one point, he invokes “Zeus’s butthole” while lamenting their imprisoned state as Mason quietly works to spring them from their jail cells. Nevertheless, Connery ends up with the film’s most memorable line about the difference between winners and losers. If you don’t know it, that’s reason enough to see the movie right away.

But at the end of the day, this is an action movie and it delivers the goods time and time again with brutally effective setpieces that make excellent use of their geography. A lengthy car chase through the hills of San Francisco is the most recognizable as a Michael Bay speciality, with rapid-pace editing, demolished cars and explosions whenever even remotely possible. There’s more than a little Indiana Jones influence on two specific sequences on the island, one in which Mason deftly navigates a barrage of timed flame bursts and another that involves a cart chase through a mine shaft. It’s odd to think of this movie as modest in any regard but the excesses of Bay’s mega-blockbuster output after it almost make this seem like an indie by comparison. If Bay on a budget means that we get more gems like The Rock, then I say tighten up the purse strings and let it rip.

Reel Views, Review

The Northman

Three films into his career, writer/director Robert Eggers has carved out a niche for himself with period pieces that stick closely to the language used during their respective eras. Much of the script for his debut The Witch was translated directly from 17th century Puritan texts, while the dialogue from The Lighthouse leans heavily into the dialects of late 19th century sailors. His latest effort, The Northman, is another piece of historical fiction — this time in 9th century Iceland — but everything just feels a bit too hollow in this outing. The music of the characters’ words somehow doesn’t ring as true this time and it doesn’t help that this is the most straightforward narrative that Eggers has told thus far. There are wrinkles of weirdness and wonder left in this tale but like the film’s hulking protagonist, it prefers bold print over footnotes and action over contemplation.

We meet the Viking warrior Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) as a young boy, excited to greet his father King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) on the way home from his most recent pillaging. It turns out the most treacherous battle awaits him in his kingdom, where Aurvandill’s brother Fjölnir (Claes Bang) murders him in front of Amleth and takes the throne for himself. The young prince narrowly escapes Fjölnir’s forces, is taken in by a separate band of Vikings and vows vengeance on Fjölnir, while also swearing to rescue his mother Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) as well. Factoring into his conquest for revenge is Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy), a slave who comes to have a growing affection for the fearless Amleth and whose knowledge and practice of dark magic proves useful to their shared goal of overthrowing Fjölnir.

The ubiquity of the Scandinavian legend of Amleth is due in no small part to the direct influence it had on William Shakespeare while writing Hamlet, a tale that has itself been adapted countless times in various mediums. Like just about any other movie, The Northman is less about the “what” and more about the “how”; it’s less important what it’s about than how it’s about it. This is where the film is chiefly a disappointment: its story doesn’t do quite enough to distinguish itself from myriad other fictional accounts of a son swearing revenge of his murderous uncle. Too much of the film is blunt in its execution of its core mission; Amleth literally repeats it in voiceover over and over like a mantra. There are details in the journey that evoke the time period in interesting ways but they don’t often add much to the way that we’re supposed to feel about these characters.

Eggers is working with a budget that’s roughly 8 times the size of each of his two previous features and he certainly makes good use of the extra cash when it comes to presentation and overall cinematic experience. A bravura attack sequence set in the land of the Rus feels like a follow-up to the opening salvo Iñárritu put together for The Revenant. It begins with Amleth grabbing a thrown spear mid-air and chucking it back at the opposing forces and doesn’t end until his battle axe has spilled more than its fair share of blood. Willem Dafoe makes the most of his limited screen time as an overseer of a spiritual ceremony, talking directly to camera while ominously describing fates being sealed and tears of sadness that can no longer be shed. The reclusive Icelandic artist Björk also pops up as a sorceress with foreboding news and an outfit that is exactly as ornate as one would expect from the fashion iconoclast.

It’s window dressing and exquisitely-rendered window dressing but the more I sat with The Northman, the more it felt like a distraction rather than a supplement to the storyline. The Witch and The Lighthouse simply carried much more weight subtextually and psychologically than this film and put bluntly (as Amleth may respect), there just doesn’t seem to be enough brains to this story. There is a scene between the grown-up Amleth and Gudrún that challenges our conception of what their relationship may be but there are too few moments of character insight like this in the rest of the movie. From a narrative perspective, I didn’t feel challenged or moved very often but perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t in suspense as I watched this revenge tale play out. Perhaps it’s my fault for expecting something different from Eggers based on his previous work but The Northman is a let-down nevertheless.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Memory, an action thriller starring Liam Neeson and Guy Pearce about an assassin-for-hire who finds he’s become a target after he refuses to complete a job for a dangerous criminal organization.
Streaming on HBO Max is The Survivor, a historical drama starring Ben Foster and Vicky Krieps that tells the story of a real-life survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who boxed fellow inmates to survive.
Available to rent on demand is Hatching, a Finnish horror movie starring Jani Volanen and Reino Nordin involving a young gymnast who discovers a strange egg and hides it from her family until something wholly unexpected emerges.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent

Following up one of the very best performances of his career in Pig, Nicolas Cage is back with his most challenging role yet: Nicolas Cage. The taunted and vaunted star is naturally playing a heightened version of himself in the cheekily-titled The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, an undeniably affable if frustratingly cursory buddy comedy that may still satisfy the cult of Cage. That the finished product is more Midnight Run than Being John Malkovich is completely understandable from a marketing standpoint but may be disappointing for those expecting, as the tagline boasts, “The Most Nicolas Cage Movie Ever.” Yes, there are plenty of easter eggs and nods to numerous films in Cage’s 40-year pilgrimage on-screen but the fan service often feels more like window dressing than an integral part of what makes the mechanics of the movie work.

We meet this version of Cage as he is over-selling himself to a director (David Gordon Green, in a cameo) who already seems nervous to cast him in his King Lear riff. As has seemingly been the case for the real-life Cage, this Nick is also struggling with finances as mortgages and alimony to his ex-wife Olivia (Sharon Horgan) add up to more than he has to repay. Given the circumstances, his agent Richard (Neil Patrick Harris) is excited to report that Cage has been offered $1 million just to show up to the birthday party of wealthy super fan Javi (Pedro Pascal). On his way to Spain, Cage is stopped by a pair of CIA agents (Tiffany Haddish and Ike Barinholtz), who don’t buy that Javi has become a billionaire strictly from working in the olive industry. As Cage and Javi’s bond grows closer, Nick’s torn between helping the CIA and protecting his new friend from danger.

What’s most important about The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is that writer/director Tom Gormican is in on the joke with Cage and seems to understand both the person and the persona at the center of this meta comedy. At various points in the film, Cage is confronted by a devil-on-the-shoulder version of his Wild at Heart character, whose bawdy advice is designed to get them back up to the top, no matter what. It’s a derivative but effective way to bifurcate Cage’s larger-than-life screen presence from how he most likely behaves in real life. Gormican is able to reconcile Nic Cage: Leaving Las Vegas Oscar winner with Nic Cage: star of The Wicker Man (yes, it’s referenced) and create a universe where both can peacefully coexist.

The seeds of a great movie are there but the soil isn’t packed as well as it could be. Having Cage go to an eccentric billionaire’s fancy villa and reflect on his storied screen career through the eyes of a super fan is a terrific comedic setup. But Gormican wimps out and dedicates most of the runtime to a broad storyline where Cage is investigating Javi’s potential cartel connections behind his back and doing a poor job of spying at the CIA’s behest. It sets up moderately funny scenes like one where Cage breaks into a server room and accidentally gets knocked out by his own tranquilizing weapon. Cage sells it as well as Leonardo DiCaprio did in the Lemmon Quaalude scene from The Wolf of Wall Street but it’s a nondescript sequence that could be in any other spy comedy from the last ten years.

When the movie focuses on the friendship between Nick and Javi, it becomes sharper both as a specific kind of drug-fueled buddy comedy and a compendium of Cage conceits. The inevitable scene where Cage finds Javi’s embarrassing shrine of Cage memorabilia features plenty of references to his past projects but also narrows in on the peculiar bond between the two characters. When Cage happens upon a sequined pillow with his face on it and makes a self-effacing remark while swiping his hand across it, Javi lovingly puts the pattern back in order to reveal his face once more. Javi knows all sorts of fun facts about Cage — like the fact that he did his own car stunts for Gone In 60 Seconds — but still has more to learn about who the man actually is off-camera. A more focused script would’ve made The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent an even bigger joy for fans but as is, it’s an enjoyable romp centered around Hollywood’s most beguiling thespian.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing exclusively in theaters is The Northman, a historical epic starring Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman which tells the brutal story of a young Viking prince on a quest to avenge his father’s murder in 10th-century Iceland.
Also playing only in theaters is The Bad Guys, an animated crime comedy starring Sam Rockwell and Marc Maron about several reformed, yet misunderstood, criminal animals attempting to become good, with some disastrous results along the way.
Premiering on Netflix is Along For The Ride, a romantic drama starring Emma Pasarow and Belmont Cameli about a pair of high school seniors whose shared insomnia leads to overnight dates around their seaside town.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Column, Midwest Film Journal

Nun of our Business: The Little Hours

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

It’s an idea so rife with comedic possibilities, it’s a wonder Mel Brooks hadn’t thought of it years ago: what if 14th century nuns acted and spoke like 21st century women? Thus is the anachronistic guiding light of The Little Hours, a sex-fueled comedy based on a selection of stories from The Decameron by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. Despite the obvious differences in how the characters speak to one another, writer/director Jeff Baena sticks to the main plot points and even some of the subtext from the centuries old source material. I’m not extremely well-versed in nun-based cinema but I would imagine this is the only one that opens with a scene where a nun yells “hey, don’t fucking talk to us!” and then shows up to Mass in the following scene.

Nominally set in 1347 Garfagnana, the film is centered around a trio of nuns: Sister Alessandra (Alison Brie), Sister Ginevra (Kate Micucci), and Sister Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza). Their peaceful countryside convent is shaken by the new presence of Massetto (Dave Franco), a virile servant on the run from his master Lord Bruno (Nick Offerman) for sleeping with Bruno’s wife. Since nuns have berated the help routinely in the past, Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) takes Massetto in as a gardener for the grounds, on the condition that poses as a deaf-mute. It turns out Alessandra is so desperate for a potential suitor that she throws herself at Massetto without even being able to argue that he’s a “really good listener”. Meanwhile, Fernanda and Ginevra manifest their own plans for the new resident himbo while Lord Bruno searches furiously for his lost property.

The Little Hours is the rare comedy that not only doesn’t wear out its welcome but actually gets better as it picks up momentum. Baena makes the mistake of dedicating a bit too much of the paltry 87-minute runtime to setting up Massetto and his agreement with Father Tommasso, which swallows up the entire first act. I would have preferred more time to have been dedicated to setting up the trio of nuns, whose personalities have overlaps that it would have been nice to distinguish before Massetto hits the scene. Marta, a lascivious friend of Fernanda’s played by Jemima Kirke, also shows up in the second act around the same time as Massetto and pushes things where they need to go comedically. Fernanda unleashes some serious nihilistic leanings while Ginevra reveals deeper secrets about her sexual and religious preferences and Alessandra pursues her affair with the duplicitous Massetto.

As with his 2014 zom-com Life After Beth, Baena brings John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon back as romantic partners, although the stakes are higher for their partnership in The Little Hours. Since the latter is Mother Superior of the convent, Father Tommasso faces excommunication if his relationship with Shannon’s Mother Marea was to be discovered. The hushed exchanges and guarded flirtations between Tommasso and Marea give a sweet counterbalance to the more abrasive and bawdy interactions between the other nuns. Speaking of familiar faces from the comedy world, the always funny Fred Armisen shines in the third act as a visiting bishop who’s arrived just in time to see the convent devolve into a den of iniquity. When allegations of witchcraft and sexual impropriety spread around the community, the bishop naturally calls a tribunal and Armisen is perfect as the flummoxed arbiter of proper conduct, who claims “this is the longest list I’ve ever had for sins!”

By the time things started to wind down in The Little Hours, I confess I had urges to watch several more hours of these sinful characters in this most pious of settings. Given that the film did less than $2 million at the box office, the possibility of a sequel or spin-off was slim to none, which is a shame given the amount of comedy gold that could still be mined from this premise. Had it performed a bit better in theaters, I could see it having a similar trajectory to What We Do in the Shadows, the hilarious vampire mockumentary that only did a few million domestically but was greenlit as an FX series in 2018. 4 years later, it’s on its way to a fourth season and has remained remarkably consistent in terms of comedic quality across the 3 seasons that have aired already. Given how much Paramount Plus is investing in original content to compete with the other streamers these days, I’ll keep the hopes for a The Little Hours spin-off series in my prayers.

Reel Views, Review

Ambulance

Michael Bay. Just the mention of the director’s name has stirred up preconceived notions in the minds of cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike since he hit the scene in the mid-90s. The one-two punch of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor solidified the tropes that are now inextricably linked with the filmmaker, codified in a style popularly called “Bayhem”. Bay’s frequent uses of melodramatic dialogue and epic, saturated landscapes, along with his fetishization of the military and of women, are just a few trademarks of his often-replicated technique. His latest film Ambulance is as action-packed as his other work and maintains signature trademarks of his approach — intense close-ups, circular camera movement, excessive lampposts — but includes breakthroughs for the director that allow it to instantly rank among his finest work.

The film centers around two adoptive brothers who have gone their separate ways since their father’s passing years ago. Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a former Marine fighting to care for his cancer-stricken wife and newborn son as the medical bills become more than his one-off jobs can pay. His brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) has taken after their father’s life of crime, knocking off banks while fronting a car detailing shop in Los Angeles. While in the middle of asking Danny for money, Will makes a snap decision to assist with a lucrative heist, which goes swimmingly until young LAPD officer Zach (Jackson White) unknowingly interrupts their plan. The unraveling of said plan involves Zach sustaining a bullet injury and the Sharp brothers hijacking an ambulance with EMT Cam (Eiza González) and the injured Zach onboard as hostages.

From the outset, Ambulance sets up its characters and their motivations with more breadth and depth than your typical action thriller. Screenwriter Chris Fedak taps into the frustrations with medical bureaucracy to which many people can relate, especially the past couple years, and Abdul-Mateen does an excellent job selling it. Gyllenhaal presents his character as the sort of cool operator who is paradoxically the most anxious person in the room at any moment, while González portrays her paramedic as a consummate professional who is enviably heroic under pressure. The scenario that puts the rookie cop in that bank at the wrong time is loaded with layers of dramatic irony and social pressure that makes the situation tense and enthralling before the rubber even meets the road.

Don’t worry: the action does come and when it does, it rarely takes any breaks. Not since Mad Max: Fury Road has there been a sustained vehicular battle this utterly engrossing and casually inventive in the way that it interjects escalating variables into the predicament. With DP Roberto De Angelis, Bay ups his aerial camerawork game by use of roving drones that dive-bomb and zig-zag across LA with both speed and precision. Put bluntly: these are exhilarating shots that wouldn’t have been possible in an action movie ten, or perhaps even five, years ago. But the cinematic fundamentals of sound action moviemaking are also present throughout, underscored by editor Pietro Scalia’s adept sense of visual timing and storytelling priority.

Bay has been charged with having a stunted and sophomoric sense of humor that accompanies his seeming lack of self-awareness but there are signs in Ambulance that he may have at least temporarily overcome these obstacles. Two police officers reference two other Michael Bay movies in a five-minute span, the second joke coinciding with the low-angle hero shot so overdone that I’ll chalk up to knowing parody rather than self-own. Gyllenhaal also rips off some diabolically sarcastic one-liners with sadistic glee, while a police captain played by Garret Dillahunt does some excellent age-juxtaposed verbal sparring with other officers. It may not be the most sophisticated humor in the world but it’s a marked step-up from Bumblebee peeing gasoline on John Turturro 15 years ago. Prior to Ambulance, Transformers was the last Bay film I had seen in a theater but his latest is clear evidence that I shouldn’t wait another 15 for my next appointment.

Score – 4.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, starring Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne, is the latest entry in the Wizarding World franchise that finds members of the British Ministry of Magic battling dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald’s army.
Father Stu, starring Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson, is a based-on-a-true-story drama which follows the life story of Father Stuart Long, a boxer who turns to Catholic priesthood after suffering from an inflammatory muscle disease.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, is a sci-fi comedy about an aging Chinese immigrant who is swept up in an cosmic adventure where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Morbius

For those who don’t have their PhDs in cinematic universes, it should be said that the awful new superhero movie Morbius is the third entry in the Sony’s Spider-Man Universe that was created in 2018 for Venom. See, Sony leased the rights for Spider-Man away to Marvel Studios in 2015 but in an effort to ring all the cash out of the spider web that they could, they developed movies based around the character’s villains, even in the hero’s absence. Making a pair of Venom movies without Spider-Man is sort of like making a film about macaroni without cheese but at least baddies like Venom and Vulture are on the A-list of the webslinger’s foes. By selecting Morbius, Sony has already jumped down to the C-list of comic book antagonists as their SSU plows ahead against petty obstacles like artistic integrity and good taste.

We meet Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) as he arrives at a cave in Costa Rica and draws vampire bats out using a machine whose function is never clearly (or unclearly) stated. Along with his childhood friend Lucien (Matt Smith), Morbius suffers from a rare blood illness, for which the doctor has spent his entire life trying to develop a cure. His latest attempt involves splicing his DNA with the recently-captured bats, which gifts him with vampiric superpowers but also curses him with an unquenchable thirst for blood. Morbius’s hunger is temporarily satiated by a synthetic blood he created but his growing bloodlust has coincided with a string of attacks on the city by someone who has been sucking victims dry. Together with fellow scientist Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona), Morbius sets out to take down the city’s new “vampire killer”.

Like many films that have been released over the past year, Morbius is yet another victim of covid-related delays after an initial July 2020 premiere window and as that’s the case, its trailer has played ad nauseum since movie theaters have reopened. It teases about a dozen Easter eggs and scenes that never made the final cut, which points to manipulative advertising rather than judicious editing on Sony’s part. It’s also indicative of aimlessness when it comes to what story director Daniel Espinosa is trying to tell. The film shamelessly rips off specific moments from better superhero films like Batman Begins and 2002’s Spider-Man but not in a way that helps justify why this interpretation of the Morbius character should exist in the first place.

From the casting of Leto as a brilliant scientist to a plot that’s been drained of every ounce of originality, there’s not an aspect of Morbius that doesn’t feel haphazard and sloppy. An awkward early flashback depicts a meet-ugly between Morbius and Lucien, where the former insists on calling the latter by the incorrect name to mock his expendability. From that moment on, the title character operates in two modes of “selfish jerk” and “outright bore” for the rest of the movie. Leto injects the film with lifeless voiceover narration that insults the audience’s intelligence, as if we’re not supposed to know what echolocation is. At least Matt Smith is trying to have some fun — he even gets a peppy dance number before a night on the town — but his antics are bogged down by the film’s brooding and moody nature.

What’s most painful about Morbius is just how hard it’s trying to be cool and how dated it looks in all of its efforts to do so. With speed-ramping bullet effects out of an Underworld sequel and color palette that blends shades of Hot Topic and Spirit Halloween, it’s about as edgy as an Evanescence cover band on a Tuesday night. I’m all for a comic book movie with moral complexity or a darker tone but there’s nothing ambiguous or artistic about the way this film tries to get across its message. Perhaps I was a bit too hard on Venom a few years ago because that movie and its sequel at least have an admirable, out-of-left-field goofiness that’s nowhere to be found in this self-serious dreck. Tawdry and toothless, Morbius is more BS from a media conglomerate that needs to put a stake in the heart of this bungled cinematic universe.

Score – 1.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is a Michael Bay-directed action thriller about two robbers who steal an ambulance and hold an EMT hostage after their heist goes awry.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2, starring Ben Schwartz and James Marsden, is the sequel to the 2020 video game adaptation that finds Sonic and his new partner Tails squaring off against the evil Dr Robotnik and his new ally Knuckles.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, is a science fiction action comedy about an aging Chinese immigrant who is tasked with saving the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup