Movie Nation

I figure I’m the last one to get around to noticing this trailer (seen before “Morbius” in a theater), and the news that this cult-following TV show has generated a big screen movie. The reason for that? It pegs my “Who gives a s—?” meter.

I’ve never gotten more than a couple of minutes into the under-animated, dry etc. TV show before finding the remote (which I’ve been looking for, frantically, once the credits started) and changing the channel.

That’s just me, of course. Have at it, adults still into watching cartoons.

Some of the best vampire “transitioning” effects ever are wasted on “Morbius,” perhaps the least interesting and certainly the least consequential action picture ever to wear the Marvel badge.

Jared Leto isn’t awful in the title role. But aside from the effects, everything and everyone around him is indifferent and dull and he proves himself once again as more suited to chewy supporting roles than a lead.

Michael Morbius and the rich kid Lucien, whom re-names “Milo,” met in a Greek sanitarium for children of wealth and the rarest of the rare blood diseases, one that requires a transfusion or two every day to keep them alive. Morbius, plainly a genius, is sent away to school where he vows to “find the cure” for them both.

But while we catch up with the adult Michael as he’s refusing his Nobel Prize, probably for inventing artificial blood, he hasn’t yet figured out how to correct the faulty DNA that keeps him and Milo (the least interesting recent “Doctor Who,” Matt Smith) weak and on crutches.

“Bats” might be the answer, and no, he didn’t get that idea from Bruce Wayne. Vampire bats from the Jurassic Park corner of Costa Rica provide the serum that Morbius takes as the first “human trial” on an offshore Panamanian-flagged freighter. That turns out to be bad news for the hired goons/minions on board.

And this is where “Morbius” pretty much goes off the rails.

It’s bad enough that the good doctor’s scientist/colleague (Adria Arjona) doesn’t know how to pronounce “NoBEL” (Director Daniel Espinosa didn’t get another take?), but for evil henchmen, these mercenary minions seem awfully eager to pull the trigger on their supposed meal ticket.

It’s to no avail. Morbius, transformed to something just this side of “sleeping in coffins,” slaughters them and makes his way back to New York, cursed and yet ethical enough to see that nobody else should try this stuff as he enlists Dr. Bancroft (Argjona) to elude the mustachioed FBI agents (Tyrese Gibson, Al Madrigal) on the case.

“These puncture marks, they look like fangs to you?”

And Morbius must also fend off the rich financier of his experiments — “Milo” — hellbent on availing himself of this hellish “cure” he’s paid for.

A hallmark of many of the less enduring or endurable comic book adaptations is their humorlessness, and “Morbius” is a case in point. The best gag (perhaps from the comic book) is the name of the Panamanian freighter, “Murnau,” the director of the first important vampire movie, “Nosferatu,” F.W. Murnau.

Letolocks is not just about the dreamy eyes and Reagan/Elvis dye jobs. He’s has made it his business to build on the “Method” legend of DeNiro and make his body over for roles. Here, he’s hollow-eyed and emaciated as pre-“transformation” Morbius, chiseled and “cut” afterwards. That’s not why this movie sat on a shelf for so long, waiting for him to beef up or starve himself down. It’s a Marvel picture and there was a pandemic going on so there was no sense leaving money on the table by releasing it to empty cinemas.

But I can’t remember a Marvel movie that went to less trouble giving us an “origin story,” that put more effort into tying the tale into this corner of the Marvel “universe,” and that had less going for it.

Sony makes the best arguments “for” the continued existence of endless iterations of Marvel adaptations, and the best arguments “against” them.

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, some frightening images, and brief strong language

Cast: Jared Leto, Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson, Al Madrigal and Jared Harris

Credits: Directed by Daniel Espinosa, scripted by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, based on the Marvel comic. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:44

He single-handedly turned America into an Olympic swimming powerhouse, competing in four Olympiads. And while touring with that Olympic fame, he brought Hawaiian surfing to the world.

There are statues to Duke Kahanamoku in countries where he first dipped a board in the waters of this or that section of coast, and surfers to this day speak in awed reverence about “the father” of “our sport” and lifestyle.

Beach lifeguarding? He pretty much invented that too, on one fateful day in 1925, swimming out into ferocious, trawler-sinking surf in the most publicized beach rescue ever, pulling survivors out of the water onto his board and ferrying them ashore, a “superhuman” feat in 25 foot waves that wasn’t the first of his many rescues, nor the last.

To Hawaiians, he was “the living embodiment of ‘aloha,'” and the island chain’s global ambassador to the world for half a century.

A brown man in the Golden Age of White Supremacy, Duke Kahanamoku integrated sports and cultures, Hollywood and even the racist institutions of his home islands with an all-embracing grace that become another piece of his legacy.

“Waterman” is a grand feel-good remembrance of an epic life, a documentary that could make even non-surfers and “haoles” (non-Hawaiians) swell with tearful pride that the human race ever produced this “bronze god” who walked among us and changed the world.

Isaac Halasima’s film has interviews with descendants, historians and researchers, as well as surfers and surfing historians recalling the Duke’s exploits and influence on everything from Hawaiian tourism to the invention of “extreme sports.” There are recreations of several of these events as well.

The film is framed within a 1950s episode of the famous “This is Your Life” TV biography series, and has radio and TV interviews with Duke dating back to the early 1950s. We see newsreel footage and still shots from Olympics, from his landmark visits to Australia and New Zealand. There’s a generous sampling of his Hollywood film work, where they never let him become a leading man, only to turn his friend, the swimming champion who finally surpassed him in the Olympics, Johnny Weissmuller, into Tarzan, a screen icon of the 1930s and ’40s.

The film begins with a montage of Hawaiian history set to animation, and ends a funeral that brought all of the islands to a halt in mourning. All along the way, we see a new surfboard “shaped,” the old, traditional hand-carved way, from raw lumber to work of art.

And it has Aquaman himself, Hawaiian hunk Jason Momoa, narrating the story of this extraordinary yet humbly-lived life.

A contemporary of Native American Olympian Jim Thorpe, Kahanamoku inspired a “Chariots of Fire” moment of Olympic sportsmanship, and provided more red letter dates for his respective sports than anyone you can name.

Although the film is quite sloppy with dates in its intertitles, it makes a fine introduction to a larger than life figure’s extraordinary public career and is the best argument yet for giving the “the “Big Kahuna” and icon a big screen biography.

Rating: unrated, PG

Cast: Duke Kahanamoku, Johnny Weissmuller, Kelly Slater, Kelia Moniz, Carissa Moore, Laird Hamilton and Ha’a Keaulana, narrated by Jason Momoa.

Credits: Directed by Isaac Halasima, based on the book “Water: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku,” by David Davis.

Running time: 1:32

This all star murder mystery comes to HBO Max May 5. Interesting to hear the Oscar winning Firth’s latest take on an American accent.

The setting is unfamiliar, the language spoken is Arabic, the violence unexpected and the plot — “Who is framing me for the famous man they had shot in my rideshare?” well-worn.

The slick, confusing and yet somehow familiar Egyptian thriller “30. March” forces the Western viewer to engage it in one’s own film comfort zone — genre. It’s a “clear my name” or “Could I really have done this?” thriller with a disorienting lack of sure-footing.

Is the “hero” really a “villain?” What on Earth could he do for a living that allowed him to become reclusive, with a nice apartment, an ex and a child, a shrink, a hot-to-trot neighbor warm for his form and a lawyer-protector pal?

Because this rideshare thing he does at night (driving while wearing sunglasses) wouldn’t cover his expenses. But that’s how the well-known virologist/TV pundit (!?) Naeyr happens to be in Ali’s back seat when the motorcycle assassins ride up and pop him.

Ali (Hameed Al Madani) voice-over narrates “my life as a dream,” giving us and his distracted psychotherapist (Injy Al Moqaddem) a cursory overview of his problems (“You need to go back into rehab.”) up to the point where he has to go on the lam.

Because that murdered guy in his back seat? He was famous. Ali’s a little too experienced at dumping the body to be wholly innocent. And he’s a bit too hazy on his command of reality to be sure he didn’t do it.

Oh, and that body? It won’t stay “dumped.” It turns up in his apartment after Ali’s slept the previous night off. Between that and the murder weapon, the fact that the cops were tipped and he’s immediately arrested, only to violently make his getaway from a hospital, suggests Ali was an easy patsy to pin this on, and is known as a man of violence.

That doesn’t keep sexy neighbor Hanan (Dina El Sherbiny) from lustily, eagerly and ditzily trying to help him, or lawyer-friend Abel (Hamad Almutaani) from hiding him.

As Ali acquires shiny pistols, digs for clues and meets shadier and shadier figures, Ali wonders just how he got mixed up in something so big and so dangerous with so very many people out to get him.

Hard living?

There’s a slick, soapy sheen to director Ahmed Khaled’s film of this not-quite-exhausting script. Mysteries commonly use the voice-over interior monologue crutch, but rarely as cryptic-to-the-point-of-obtusely as screenwriter Hameed Al Madani does.

“We ran to our fates” to “an enemy I didn’t know” may be poetic. But it doesn’t advance the plot or give the viewer nearly enough to go on just to keep up.

The conventions of the genre may be familiar — tracking the dead man’s contacts, rebuilding the hero’s last night via cell phone clues, impromptu interrogations and a torn up ID card. But the directions taken and tips picked-up are confusing.

As is Ali himself. Introspective, brooding, smart and seeing a psychotherapist, he hurts people, holds others hostage (a little girl at knifepoint) and has no compunction about resorting to threats and violence. He seems pitiless.

Who is this guy, a better-looking Tony Soprano?

“30. March” — yes, the date has a significance to the plot — no doubt makes more sense to Egyptian audiences and Arabic speakers (subtitles often miss nuances). I found myself lost early on, only occasionally getting firm footing and only then on genre conventions that are sometimes clumsily used, misused or abused here.

This “Around the World with Netflix” outing doesn’t even give us a firm enough sense of place to ground us with the allure of the exotic. If it weren’t for the provocatively dressed women and soap operatic sexiness of it all, you’d never guess this plainly-Arab-world-set mystery was taking place in Egypt.

It could take place anywhere the drinks are strong, the women beautiful, the guns easily acquired and the shrinks sit at their desk and roll-their-own while you’re pouring your deepest insecurities out to them at the psychiatrist’s going rate.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast:
Hameed Al Madani, Dina El Sherbiny, Hamad Almutaani, Nada Musa, Asma Abul-Yaziz

Credits: Directed by Ahmed Khaled, scripted by Hameed Al Madani. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39

The viewing event of the spring isn’t some streaming series on Hulu, Amazon, Disney or Netflix. It’s a an eye-popping motion picture event that demands to be seen in a cinema, preferably IMAX, to get the full overwhelming and immersive effect.

It doesn’t bear a Marvel or DC brand. The heroes don’t wear capes, Spandex, Spanx or bustierres. This cerebral science fiction keeps the effects mostly analog — stunt performers, wirework, frenetic action editing. No CGI superheroes and supervillains brawling in colorful, incoherent digital blurs.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the truth-in-advertising title, a trippy science-and-the-supernatural tale told in eye-candy strokes by the filmmakers who brought us “The Swiss Army Man.” A MOVIE movie with a genuine “beginning, middle and end” in the Age of open-ended, cliff-hangered “Content,” it’s something to see, I tell you what.

Kafkaesque, a “Matrix” adrift in the “Spiderverse,” a hint of “Brazil” at its most “Buckeroo Banzai,” with the whimsy of “Being John Malkovich” and the some of the pathos of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Everything” is a self-mocking/self-aware dive into the “multiverses.” That’s the scientific sidebar that has enraptured comic books writers and fans and science fiction on the page and on the screen for decades.

And if its a jumble at times, a deluge of images and exposition blending science and pseudoscience, at least it’ll shut up those Tweeters and Instabraggers tempted to slap “Living my best life” on whatever indulgences they share with the social mediascape.

Because as this movie asks — “Seriously, how can you know?”

“Crouching Tiger” star, Bond film veteran and “Crazy Rich Asian” alumna Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, a Chinese expat joylessly overwhelmed by her joyless life, married to relentlessly upbeat but plainly unhappy Waymond (former “Goonies/Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” child star Ke Huy Quan).

She can’t help but notice he has a divorce decree in hand.

Even the “Joy” in her life, the daughter bearing that name, is miserable and a source of her mother’s misery. She is aimless and gay, something Mom can’t bear to explain to her father (legendary character player James Hong), who has just moved in with them.

Their Simi Valley (California) laundromat is cluttered, dumpy and broke. And this heartless IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis) is on their case. No use playing the language barrier “confused” card, immigrants. Pay up, clean up the possible fraud on your return or they’ll seize the laundry.

As unfriendly and bitter as Evelyn is, she considers their regular customers “friends” if not family, and tries to get the woman she only knows (in Mandarin, with English subtitles) as “Big Nose” (Jenny Slate) and others to join them for a Chinese New Year party. No, that karaoke machine they bought isn’t now deductible.

Buried under all this disorganized paperwork, getting her head bitten off by the IRS harridan and her father’s “No English” meddling is a helluva time for her might-be-ex-soon spouse to say “I’m not your husband,” to tell her she’s not the only “Evelyn,” and inform her that, multiversally speaking, “You’re living your worst life.”

Oh, and there’s this multiverse villain hunting for her the way this “version” of her husband is. He hopes she’s a fighter and can fulfill that “our last hope” promise. The evil Jobu Tobacke looks like daughter Joy. That’s by design. Jobu wants Evelyn dispatched.

Evelyn must pop in green bluetooth buds (instead of “Matrix” shades), master “verse jumping,” with one particular version of her husband as her guide. And she must fight Jobu Tobacke and her minions with everything she’s got, and every skill she picks up from her verse-jumping into Evelyn as Japanese steakhouse chef, Evelyn as maid to a BDSM aficionado, Evelyn as a famous martial arts star, etc.

The action beats are epic brawls, all the more amazing when you consider that basically all of these take place within the low-rise/high-rise where the Simi Valley IRS offices are located.

The filmmakers’ self-awareness comes from Easter Eggs and overt homages to “2001,” “Ratatouille” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the like. Co-writer/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert give themselves the license to set their tale in a stereotypical “Chinese laundry” whose co-owner makes “Big Nose” cracks about a Jewish customer.

All this “chaos” can be confusing, even for those taking notes. But “chaos” is the very point of it all.

“This is CRAZY.” “You’re starting to GET it!”

And for all its attempts at delivering a heartfelt message, the finale is more something that unravels than resolves.

But “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is still something to see, something that demands to be seen in a cinema, mouth agape at the wonders playing out on the huge wall — the bigger the IMAX the better — in front of you.

Rating: R for some violence, sexual material and language

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenny Slate and James Hong.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. An A24 release.

Running time: 2:12

Cute concept, and then they throw in a twist…a PUN on “Dual,” as in “duel to the DEATH.”

This is the gonzo conceit that the director of “The Art of Self-Defense” came up with — sci-fi with a “we can’t have TWO of you running round, can we?” bloodsport.

Looks hilarious.

Beulah Koale, Theo James and Aaron Paul co-star with fanboy fave Ms. Gillan in this April 15 release.

Documentaries are a great way of getting a quick summary of the history of this or that corner of the culture, subcultures we know little about.

“Girls Can’t Surf” has that going for it, and if we’re not careful, we might learn something come April 19 when this movie streams and goes on sale on DVD.

Another prequel? Steve Carell doing the Young Gru voice?

Look at this supporting cast — Michelle Yeoh, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Taraji P.. Henson, Lucy Lawless, Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, RZA, Alan Arkin and…Julie Andrews.

July 1.

For a horror movie, “Night’s End” comes up awfully short in frights. Even the manufactured quick-cut “jolts” couldn’t alarm a toddler, even if the SHRIEK accompanying them would wake anybody.

For a film bathed in gloom, there’s little suspense or building dread about how things are and how bad they’re about to be.

As a pandemic lock-down filmmaking “exercise,” it’s only moderately effective, making use ofshut-in vlogger’s living quarters, giving us a peek at his life and the lives of others, meeting him online, chatting from their carefully Zoom curated “backdrops.”

But maybe that’s looking at Jennifer Reeder’s picture all wrong. Just over an hour into this short and slow slog, there’s “evidence” of a ghost (yawn) that gives everybody listed on the credits a chance to show us their scared-witless face — framed on a computer screen. And damned if it isn’t hilarious.

The fact that one of those faces belongs to the great Michael Shannon, sharing scenes with his real-life wife Kate Arrington, just adds to the amusement. You want to see how hard it is to pull off that look and justifiable reaction in a 15.6 inch diagonal-measure laptop screen? Watch these pros of varying talents take their best shot.

Geno Walker plays Ken Barber, a new-to-Agoraphobia guy who lost his job, his family and maybe his mind some months ago. He lives in a dark apartment in a mostly-empty older building, with rooms separated by plastic sheet doorways and the windows meticulously covered with custom-cut clips of newspapers.

He strips the labels off every food can, every one of the many Pepto bottles he keeps to mix with his morning coffee. Ken exercises, counts backward at bedtime and judges each challenge he faces as “forward progress.”

Ken does vlogs, running multiple channels in hopes of making this his unemployed supplemental income gig — “Ken Barber’s Management Tips,””Ken Barber’s Divorced Dad Tips,” “Ken Barber’s Long Life Tips.”

But he doesn’t notice when one of the stuffed birds he decorates his refuge with tumbles off a shelf behind him while making a video. Shockingly, he has an audience, and some of them notice. So does his BFF Terry (Felonious Munk).

“Maybe it’s a ghost.”

His re-married ex-wife (Arrington), on good terms despite Ken’s “breakdown,” suggests he “do some research” on the place. “Did somebody die there?”

And the next thing you know, Ken is doing that digging, reading this online weirdo’s (the ironically-named Lawrence Grimm) “ghost” book, taking suggestions and gaining attention as his videos become a cult hit.

It’s just that whatever’s there is drawing blood, hurling him off his chair, knocking on his door and reaching through the crack as he opens it. And every single incident is accompanied by a blood-curdling scream.

No, not Ken’s.

Director Reeder (“Knives and Skin”) has a movie framed in mostly close-ups — a must for maximum frights — cloaked in shadows and built around ghosts and “evidence” of their presence. But she and her editor cannot manufacture suspense in post-production and blow every single “gotcha” with cuts that don’t reveal enough to be frightening and that never build towards anything.

The cast is adequate, although Walker isn’t the most compelling lead, even taking into account the myopic conditions this was filmed under. Only Grimm seems to get the camp this could be, a supernatural “expert” who looks like Steve Buscemi and tries on his best Alan Rickman vamp while parked in front of shelves covered in lit candles for his Zoom shot.

Whatever “Night’s End” didn’t do for me, that one big unintentional cast-wide-gasp laugh at about an hour in was the best I’ve had in months, so thanks for that.

Rating: unrated, violet imagery, profanity

Cast: Geno Walker, Felonious Munk, Kate Arrington, Lawrence Grimm, Daniel Kyri and Michael Shannon.

Credits: Directed by Jennifer Reeder, scripted by Brett Neveu. A Shudder release.

Running time: 1:22