Morbius (2022)

 

This vampire superhero hardly endears himself to viewers when, early on, he slaughters a roomful of people, but somehow we are still asked to sympathise with him and gun for him as he enters into a battle with a similar bat-bite-influenced villain in what is, dreary-start-to-dreary-finish, a lethargic entry into the Marvel universe with the only thing less charismatic than the lead character being Jared Leto, the lead actor himself, whose appeal as a Hollywood superstar completely eludes me.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Little Things (2021)

It is wrong to say this is a thriller about the serial murders of six or five women because in fact it is an unpleasant drama about three male caricatures, Rami Malek's incomprehensible suit-wearing detective, Denzel Washington's heavy-footed deputy sheriff, and Jared (if I limp I'm acting, right?) Leto's pot-bellied Charles Manson type, a trio whose characterisation ends with their outfits but whose interactions, you won't realise until the dismaying end, are the things you are being asked to care about - the women, all of them dead except for a door-opener, some out-of-focus swimmers in a pool, and one who actually speaks but only three or four lines and only to help facilitate the film's utter male-centredness, are, literally, just little things in the way.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Suicide Squad (2016)

A government intelligence agent hits upon the bright idea of assembling DCEU villains to fight future "superhuman terrorists" but the moment these unbriefed and unwilling criminal metahumans are released from Belle Reve prison, problems erupt of the sort a slightly more forward-thinking person could have anticipated, and compounding these problems is the pervading sense throughout the movie that someone forgot to ask Batman and The Flash whether they weren't too busy to step in and the fact that it turns out the only things apart from a bomb required to overcome a many-thousands-of-years-old Enchantress are not scales, sharp teeth, fireballs and psychosis, but an ability to swim, throw and shoot at close-range.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Panic Room (2002)

This thriller opens on Jodie Foster's Meg Altman inspecting a big empty shell of a NY brownstone which she promptly buys and discovers has a panic room just in time for three thieves to break in, and from there, this big empty shell of a movie with a neat concept boxed up deep inside becomes a long stalemate with Meg and her daughter inside the panic room, the thieves at a loss outside, and no amount of tricksy camera work sweeping in and out of keyholes, through walls or meaninglessly zooming in on torch bulbs and gas pipes can raise the tension to anything close to panic-levels given the whole situation is a mess no-one is in control of.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS