Morbius (4½ Stars)

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Netflix Thursday #36

The cover above was the first appearance of Morbius in Amazing Spider-Man #101, dated October 1971. Don't be put off by Spider-Man having six arms. It was a silly idea that Marvel had which only lasted a few issues.

Today I'm visiting my son Benjamin in Obersontheim. The weather is freezing! It's -8C up here on the hill, three degrees colder than where I live in Münchingen. He's more of a gamer than a film fan, so he relies on streaming services. I picked "Morbius" on Netflix as a film he hasn't watched before.

"Morbius" didn't do as well as expected at the box office, but at least it made a slight profit. It's a dark film, which is probably the reason not as many fans went to see it. How big is the overlap between Marvel fans and horror movie fans? I can't judge by myself, because I'll watch anything.

The post credit scenes tie in with the multiverse. As far as I know, Morbius lives in the same universe as Venom, Earth-TRN688. In the mid-credits scenes – there are two of them – the Vulture jumps from Earth-199999 and proposes teaming up with Morbius to fight with Spider-Man. Does that make sense? We've never seen Earth-TRN688's version of Spider-Man. It would make more sense for Morbius to jump into Earth-199999. I have the impression that Marvel Studios doesn't know what it's doing. Apart from that, it currently seems unlikely that "Morbius" will have a sequel, so we can safely ignore the mid-credits scenes. They never happened.

Overall, Marvel is in a state of turmoil. "The Marvels" was a big flop, due to a few factors.

1. There's a general slump in cinema visitors.

2. There's a super-hero fatigue after too many Marvel films.

3. Disney, which now owns Marvel Studios, is being mismanaged by Bob Iger.

What's the future of Marvel in the movies? Nobody knows. If "Deadpool 3" isn't a success this year, there's no hope for Marvel.

Success Rate:  + 0.2

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The Full Monty (5 Stars)

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Didn't I watch "The Full Monty" two days ago? Yes, but I returned to it today on an impulse. When I watch a film that I don't like, I feel unclean. Maybe that's not the right word, but it's the way I felt after watching "Poor Things" today. If I'd come home late I would just have gone to bed with a glass of wine. Since it was early, i deemed it better to watch a good film to clean my mind. Something to cheer me up. And what better film than "The Full Monty", which was still lying on the desk next to my Blu-ray player?

It's too late for me to write much, so I'll just say a few words about the final scene. 200 women were gathered as extras. Money was saved by using women already involved in the film as crew members, plus the wives and friends of male crew members.

Not everyone in the audience is an unpaid extra. There are a few women that we've seen earlier in the film. One of them is Beryl, played by the beautiful Fiona Watts. She's shown in several camera shots.

When the strippers throw their belts into the audience, Fiona catches one of them. That's a souvenir she'll keep for the rest of her life. It'll remind her of her only film role.

I only found out yesterday that a Full Monty television series was made last year, featuring the same cast. It's only received lukewarm reviews. The general consensus is that it doesn't live up to the film. Nevertheless, I'm curious to see what the men look like 25 years later. It's on Disney Plus, so I'll probably check it out next week. One episode at least.

Success Rate:  + 71.7

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Poor Things (2 Stars)

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This is a film that's been nominated for many awards, including eleven awards for the upcoming Baftas. So it has to be good. Right? Wrong. To sum it up, the film starts badly, it gets worse in the middle, and towards the end it becomes only slightly better.

The film begins with a Frankenstein-ish character in Victorian London. A disfigured surgeon, also a university lecturer, has discovered how to bring people back to life. He witnesses a pregnant woman committing suicide by jumping off a bridge. He retrieves her body and revives her, but because of her head trauma he removes her brain and replaces it with the brain of her unborn baby. The result is a fully grown woman with childlike intelligence and naivety.

So far it sounds good, but I can't explain the film's problems without giving spoilers. So if you don't want spoilers, stop reading now.

Are you still with me? You were warned.

As the woman, named Bella by the surgeon, grows older she becomes more intelligent, but she remains naive. I forgot to mention that the surgeon's name is Godwin Baxter, but he lets everyone call him God. One of God's students falls in love with the childlike woman and proposes to marry her. She agrees, but a short time later she decides to have an affair with God's lawyer, a last fling before her marriage. They go to Lisbon, where they spend their days having wild sex.

On the way home Bella sees poor children and is so moved that she gives all of their money to them. Bella is broke when she arrives in Paris, so she becomes a prostitute. She does this for a while –  Months? Years? – but eventually returns to London to marry the student.

I'll stop there. I've already given more spoilers than I usually do.

As far as the film's message goes, it's a mess. It shows a woman trying to stand on her own two feet, resisting the men who try to keep her prisoner. That's admirable, but can a woman really find freedom by becoming a prostitute? Her naivety, which she retains throughout the film, is her greatest weakness. She's not a feminist role model, far from it. There are other random things I need to criticise:

Why is the surgeon disfigured? It adds nothing to the plot.

And why does he call himself God? That's rather plump.

There are alternating sequences in colour and black and white. I couldn't detect a logical reason for the differences.

Bella sees blimps flying overhead in Lisbon. I thought it was an anachronism, but after googling I found that the first blimps were invented in 1852. It still looks strange.

The film is just a random mess. Some reviews call "Poor Things" a comedy, I don't see anything funny about it. It's just ridiculous. How could anyone like it, let alone nominate it for awards?

Everything everywhere all at once (5 Stars)

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I must be getting old. I was planning to go to the cinema today to see "The Royal Hotel", but I changed my mind because it was too cold. That's the first time the weather has ever kept me away from a film. I don't want to make a habit of it. It's going to be shown again on Monday, so I have a second chance to prove I'm not a wimp. Actually it's being shown every day, but most days it's being shown dubbed into German. I have to wait until Monday to get another chance to see it with the original English dialogue.

So I used my evening at home to watch "Everything everywhere all at once", which I haven't watched for 18 months. It's an incredible film, one of my top films of 2022. I put it in third place. Maybe it should have been first. If I get a chance I'll watch all of the top three films to make up my mind. I shan't change the list now, what's done is done. The only changes I ever make to old posts is to correct spelling mistakes. But I'll tell you in a new post if I change my mind.

One thing I can tell you is that it won the Oscar for Best Film last year, along with six other Oscars. This amazed me, not because it's a great film, but because the highbrow film critics agree that it's a great film. It's a rarity for one of my favourite films to be showered with Oscars. It's also unusual for a science fiction film to be picked as Best Film at the Academy Awards. Has it ever happened before? Let me check. *long pause* Yes, "The Shape of Water" won the Best Film Oscar in 2017, but I think that it was the only other science fiction film until now. Please leave a comment and let me know if I've missed anything.

I like "Everything everywhere all at once", but do I really understand it? What I mean is, I can sit and describe the plot, but I don't know the underlying meaning of the film. I don't know what the director is trying to say. I need to look for a review by one of the highbrow critics that I'm always criticising. One of them might have something valid to say. If I find something that I agree with, I'll let you know in my next review. Until then, I'll leave you with a few photos of the laundromat owner Evelyn Wang.

Success Rate:  + 8.0

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The Full Monty (5 Stars)

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I admit that my sole reason for watching "The Full Monty" this evening was to commemorate Tom Wilkinson's death on 30th December, but wow! I'd forgotten what a great film it is! I have it on DVD, but the last time I watched it was before I started my blog in September 2010. What's wrong with me?

The first time I saw it was when it was on television. Probably 1998. I bought it soon after buying my first DVD player in 2003. How often did I watch it? I don't remember, but I know I watched films repeatedly when I didn't have many. And then I forgot all about it.

It's not just the humour that I like. I can relate to the poverty after the decline of the steel industry. I've never visited Sheffield, it's 75 miles north of Birmingham where I lived, but the town scenes look familiar. It's not so different to towns like Stoke-on-Trent and Nottingham; rolling hills with houses overlooking a valley.

Tom is best known for his role in "The Full Monty". The film was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1997, but only won the award for Best Original Score. On the other hand, it was voted the best film at the Baftas, despite fierce competition from "Titanic". I personally think that the Baftas are the most impartial awards ceremony. The Academy Awards have a pro-American bias, in general, even though there can be exceptions like "Parasite" and "Slumdog Millionaire".

"The Full Monty" is a biddy movie. Six outcasts band up to become strippers.

I can understand why Tom Wilkinson is best known for "The Full Monty". He's not the main character – in the group picture above he's hiding at the back – but he's the most tragic character in the gang. He was the factory foreman, a step above the others, but he's been made unemployed just like the men working for him. He lives in a pleasant middle class home, but he's more vulnerable to poverty than the others. He's afraid to tell his wife that he lost his job, so he puts on a suit and walks to the Job Centre every day, knowing that his wife goes out shopping with her credit cards every day.

Robert Carlyle and Tom Wilkinson are the best known actors in the film, but the other four actors (Mark Addy, Steve Huison, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer) are all well known actors in British film and television. Allow me to point out one actress, Fiona Watts, who's never achieved success. She has a non-speaking role as Beryl, a woman attending the gang's (un-)dress rehearsal. This was her only ever film role, which is a shame for a woman of her beauty.

Success Rate:  + 71.7

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Next Goal Wins (4 Stars)

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I don't often watch sports films, especially not in the cinema. "Next Goal Wins" is an exception for one reason: it was directed by Taika Waititi. I can trust his films to be first class comedies. His films are even funny when they shouldn't be funny, such as "Thor Love and Thunder". Marvel films would be better without humour, but hiring Taika as director made it obvious the film would be a comedy.

Can a true story be a comedy? Yes, as "Next Goal Wins" proves. After losing 31:0 to Australia, the national team of American Samoa was considered to be the world's worst football team. A standing joke in the film is that the Football Federation of American Samoa is abbreviated to FFAS, which is pronounced "farce". They're determined to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, so they hire an American football coach, a Dutchman who's been fired from his previous coaching jobs for constantly losing his temper. They soon have to lower their aims, and they say that they'll be happy if they score at least one goal in the qualifying rounds.

A lot of the film's humour concerns the coach's arrival on a small island. Everyone knows him. The population is only 47,000. There's no reception for his mobile phone, so he's forced to use a landline. Another comic element is the fact that the team's captain is transgender. He/she is technically still classed as male, but he's undergoing hormone treatment to become fully female. The trouble is that when he becomes too female, he'll no longer be eligible to play in a men's team.

The film has had mixed reception from critics, but I like it. It starts slowly, but it becomes funnier and funnier as it continues.

Aquaman (4 Stars)

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"Redheads! You've just gotta love em!"

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist heading this review with this photo of Amber Heard. She looks much better with her hair dyed red than with her natural blonde hair. But wouldn't the dye wear off if she spends all her time underwater?

When I watched "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" last month I realised that I could hardly remember the first film. All I remembered was the excessive use of computer graphics. That's usually a sign that it was an average film, because I best remember good films and bad films. I made up for it by logging onto Amazon to order "Aquaman".

Is it an average film? It has its ups and downs. It's uneven. So much is packed into it. Maybe too much. It runs for 143 minutes, but it could have been shortened to 110 or even 90 minutes without weakening the story. There's an exciting fight in Sicily, the best part of the film, followed by a totally unnecessary attack by monsters at sea. Then there's a subterranean world full of flying reptiles that comes straight from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. It looks good, but the mood switches from one scene to the next are exhausting.

To be honest, "Aquaman" can be enjoyed better after seeing "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom". The same characters return, particularly Black Manta and Aquaman's brother Orm. Seeing how they develop makes their first appearance easier to understand. The second film develops the characters that we already knew.

One strange thing about the Blu-ray I watched today is the way the picture height varies. Was is this way in the cinema? I don't remember. It's possible that the pictures were resized for home cinema. I'd be interested in finding out the reason.

Here are two examples. In this screenshot of Aquaman and Mera the picture is full screen.

In this screenshot of Black Manta the picture is widescreen.

I've never been a fan of widescreen films, neither in the cinema nor at home. It's claimed that the widescreen format makes the picture bigger. That's a lie. It actually makes the picture smaller, because it has to be flattened to show all of it on a cinema screen. It's most obvious at home. The black bars at the top and bottom of the television screen are ugly.

"Aquaman" might not be a great film, but Jason Momoa is a great actor. The first time he won me over was his performance in "Fast & Furious 10", but after returning to "Aquaman" I can fully appreciate his acting skill. I look forward to seeing him return in the next two Fast & Furious films.

Success Rate:  + 5.2

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