Morbius (2022)

Director: Daniel Espinosa

Cast: Jared Leto, Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris

Have I Seen it Before: Starring Jared Leto? A Spider-Man spinoff? Well, clearly I was there opening weekend.

Did I Like It: A movie review should probably not be a wellspring of snark. It’s easy, and doesn’t really engage with the film.

But I really can’t help myself.

We seem to be past the part of human history where Jared Leto is a leading man movie star, thank you very much, the one-two punch of Tron: Ares (2025) and Masters of the Universe (2026). That’s good. We can—as a species—begin to heal. I might have preferred it happened more because we all came to our senses and less because he is something of a sex pest, but sometimes we can’t choose where our progress comes from.

But, and I ask this not to crack a grin out of you, how did he become a huge star in the first place? I’m told people went head over heals for that My So-Called Life show, but didn’t that thing air for about a month? How did we confuse the cute boy on the show no body cared about with the rightful heir to Jack Nicholson?

Because, honestly, the biggest problem in this movie is not its completely average screenplay about a character even the frothiest of fanboys couldn’t care that much about. It’s the fact tha Leto is an absolute negative vortex of charisma. While he could fake his way through a Suicide Squad (2016), or a Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and any number of supporting roles, once he has to share almost every scene with an actually interesting actor like Matt Smith (whose only crime here is getting confused when Karen Gillan told him doing a Marvel movie was a career-boosting lark), the whole illusion falls apart.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terrence Stamp

Have I Seen it Before: Never, but man, how I’ve wanted to. The film had completely flown under my radar until seeing a trailer for it tied to No Time To Die (2021). The marketing was spot on. Beside both films sharing an essential Britishness, there are plenty of subtle Bond nods in the film, including setting the film precisely in time with a massive Thunderball (1965) poster greeting us in the past, and characters reflexively ordering Vespers.

Did I Like It: In my review of The Night House (2021), I remarked that it was possible that the fusion of ghost stories and Hitchcockian thrillers was intuitively obvious, but ultimately disappointing.

I spoke too soon. Wright has yet to make a bad movie, and this is a perfect fusion of style and suspense. That alone would merely meet expectations, but the man who has made his bones making confections of almost pure homage in the TV series Spaced and his collaborations with Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World’s End (2013)) has moved on from purely making a reference to something else, but instead charting his own course.

This type of film isn’t going to be at all accepted by the audience of the visual world is not completely immaculate (and other examples of the genre can at least lay claim to that much), but here the true legacy of Hitchcock is maintained and the plot is completely immaculate. I may have had a sense that Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg, who died shortly after production and ended her stellar career on a high note) knew more about what was happening to Ellie (McKenzie, also perfectly cast) and so the big twist may not have hit as hard as it had been intended, but the trip trough it was so delightful, I couldn’t possibly care. After all, who younger than the age of 60 saw Psycho (1960) for the first time and didn’t know what was coming in the fruit cellar?

Wright here has pulled over a supreme trick, and one for which I cannot readily award another filmmaker. He has grown up beyond the types of films which made him famous (films which I enjoyed immensely) and leaves me in equal measures not mourning the fact that he might not make those types of films ever again, and supremely excited for what he might have up his sleeve next.