The Northman

May The Norse
Be With You

The Northman
UK 2022
Directed by Robert Eggers
Universal

The Northman is director Robert Eggers third full length feature film and, as a big studio release, is also around ten times more the budget of his previous two movies put together (at least). Now, I really liked his feature debut The VVitch (reviewed here) but I had some problems appreciating his follow up feature, The Lighthouse, truth be told (reviewed here). Having now seen The Northman, which has been receiving a lot of good word of mouth as being this generation’s equivalent of Conan The Barbarian (no, it really isn’t), I can say that for me, this one pretty much lays somewhere in the middle of both of those. Like many Hollywood released movies of recent months, I’d have to say it isn’t a great movie and, again, it’s not a bad one either. It feels a little compromised somehow (which fits with some things the director himself has said about it) and it doesn’t feel quite epic enough in scope to be counted among many of the big fantasy films which have gone before (and it’s certainly a fantasy version of a tale rather than a straight historical one, for sure, despite much authenticity to certain scenes depicting historical customs).

Another thing I’d heard about it was that it has a very complex story... um... really? No it hasn’t. It’s a very basic revenge movie where a son witnesses his father’s death (in this case, the father is a king played by Ethan Hawke) and escapes to a distant land so he can return to avenge his father many years later.  And, yes, you’ve seen the story done a hundred times before by now on screen, I should think. The grown up son is played by Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, his mother is played by Nicole Kidman, his favourite seer is played by Willem Dafoe (from Eggers previous film), his father’s killer is played by Claes Bang and Skarsgård’s quirky love interest is played by the always incredible Anya Taylor-Joy (another Eggers collaborator). They’re all very good, the story is very simple... in that Amleth has to track down a legendary sword with semi-mystical properties (think of it as a lightweight, Stormbringer wannabe from Moorcock’s Elric Of Melnibone stories) and slay his father’s killer. So he brands himself as a slave and makes himself useful in his enemy’s community, to hide himself in plain sight and keep close to his target.

There’s literally nothing much to say about the plot but the comments that it has similarities to Conan The Barbarian, are not completely unfounded in terms of some of the content and the occasional (I believe, deliberate) nod. For example, the son living a hard life away from his slaughtered kin to return to avenge his father is pretty much the same as the first movie version of Robert E Howard’s literary creation. The scene where Amleth comes across his magical sword is very much reminiscent of the short Conan story The Thing In The Crypt, written by  L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, it seems to me. Also, the pre-credits sequence starts off with the similar, low percussion element on the music followed by the growly tones of voice over narrative introducing the character, which is again very similar to the first Conan movie... although, stylistically and in most ways, this is where the similarity ends.

It’s an entertaining enough yarn, though and it looks very good. Eggers has used something almost black and white for many of the shots set in the moonlight (which is the only time the sword can be properly used to feed on opponents blood... in darkness). So some shots will be completely monotone while others, midst the grayness, will have things like coloured torch flames, very much reminiscent of the style of pitching the colour and monotone together as seen in the Sin City movies.

So, yeah, the film looks pretty spectacular, rattles along at a hasty pace and, you are pretty much rooting for Amleth the whole way through the movie. It doesn’t, as I said earlier, feel really epic but this is more to do with the scope of the story, I think... as I said, it looks pretty spectacular.

Despite the opening bars of the score, this doesn’t go the full on, rich epic Hollywood sound of the Basil Poledouris music for Conan The Barbarian either. If anything, it’s much more stripped back and ‘of its time’ in terms of the way the music is functioning in the film (and when I say ‘of it’s time’... I don’t necessarily mean that literally, I mean that it’s more transparent, uncomplicated writing with simple orchestration). So it surprised me somewhat... since it sounds just the kind of score Eggers’ previous collaborator on his first two features, Mark Korven, would have written for this... that it’s actually composed by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough. I need to hear this one again and, at time of writing, it’s been announced that there will be a CD release of this coming soon, so I may just get a chance if they stick to their guns on that.

And I’m sorry this is such a short review for this film but that’s me pretty much done with The Northman. Like The Lighthouse, I doubt I’ll be revisiting this one for a second watch but fans of this kind of stuff should have a strong liking for it, I would have thought. It’s an entertaining, bloody depiction of a familiar trope which people should lap up. I’ve certainly not given up on this director... and I’m happy to see what he comes up with next (I think the big studio experience has somewhat him soured to taking on something like this again, by the sound of it).

Godzilla VS Kong

Kaiju KO

Godzilla VS Kong
USA/Australia/Canada/India 2021
Directed by Adam Wingard
Warner Brothers

Warning: This review will have kaiju sized spoilers.

Oof! Godzilla VS Kong is something I’d been looking forward to for a while. The fourth in the new US Monsterverse movies and following on from the two good films in the series, Kong: Skull Island (reviewed here) and Godzilla: King Of The Monsters (reviewed here), I was probably expecting a lot more from it than it could maybe, in hindsight, have credibly delivered. Also, I’ve quite liked some of director Adam Wingard’s previous movies and, although I think it’s a bigger film than he’s used to heading up... I had a lot of confidence in him on this.

And I can certainly confirm that the film looks really nice and has some beautiful, bright colours and lots of ‘monster smack’ carnage on show. It also has returning performers from one of the previous installments in the form of  Millie Bobby Brown and Kyle Chandler reprising their roles from Godzilla - King Of The Monsters. They are joined by some equally cool people such as Alexander Skarsgård as a good guy scientist and one of my favourite modern actresses, Rebecca Hall. And it even has the return of one of my favourite, iconic kaiju characters who tends to turn up from time to time in the Godzilla movies over the years, Mecha-Godzilla. So, yeah, I should have probably got a lot more out of this than I did. It looks great, has lots of explosions and punching of things and has great actors delivering the lines. Terrible nonsense lines though so, that doesn’t help things along, to start with.

I think my biggest complaint after seeing it is that I just didn’t understand what the heck this movie was about at all. Now it doesn’t help I was being hit by ‘buffering’ every minute or so for a while (I don’t know why streaming is so popular in the UK when our internet infrastructure is so terrible trying to handle anything remotely HD) and I’m sure I would have responded to this much better if I’d seen it in a proper cinema (the only way a movie should be watched the first time)... but I’m not sure anything would have helped me comprehend the plot to this film, which re-positions Godzilla as the bad guy and then, at the end, says it’s alright because he was just attacking ‘company x’ because they were doing bad things. Nope. He was killing innocent people and destroying cities in the process and that’s not a cool look... Gojira was definitely back to his old 1954 self as far as I’m concerned. And the general comments shouted by the rest of the family as we were watching, echoing mine such as... “What’s going on?”, “What just happened?”, “Was there two of him in that shot... how?”, “Is someone going to come and explain why they’re doing this and what this means?”... well, I think they speak for themselves.

I know that, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, people needed to get Kong to get them to the centre of the Earth (you know, the old hollow Earth theory again) but something to do with the gravity shift was a danger but... it’s okay because Kong was with them and... sorry, what? And a ludicrous subplot that re-introduced a less than interesting redesign of Mecha-Godzilla when, frankly, after we saw a giant mechanical eyeball near the start of the movie, we really didn’t need it spelled out. And no Charles Dance in sight? We saw him as the main villain making off with a dead Ghidorah head in the post-credits of the last movie but here, the head is back but the villain isn’t. Like he just disappeared into the ether.

But we do have the Ghidorah head... now a skull. Because obviously, a human mind needs to make a connection with a Ghidorah head to be able to control the man-made Mecha-Godzilla right? I mean, what? Just what? And then, when the human brain is destroyed, this makes Mecha-G go off into its own rampage... why? Lots of whys and whats here because... I’m sorry but this movie’s plot is just absolute twaddle. And don’t get me started on how it’s set just a couple of years in our future but there’s no mention made of the Coronavirus. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be around for a while and it seems kinda stupid that Hollywood would think we would forget about that. Nobody is masking up in this film, for sure.

Also, I know the director and composer are probably huge fans of the original films in the respective franchises but, I felt the whole thing played out with a lot less respect than either monster deserved. Junkie XL’s score has one, possibly accidental, similarity to Ifukube’s five note power theme for The Big G which I noticed in one action scene and which I suspect was just serendipitous. The previous score by the great Bear McCreary was loaded with musical references to a whole host of Toho monster themes giving the leitmotifs associated with them their due in a fan pleasing score that really served the movie well. This new score is appropriate to the action but just feels like a wasted opportunity and gives no real reference to Ifukube, Sato, Koseki or even Max Steiner in its make up. It’s just another score which could have been ‘anything appropriate’ when it’s been demonstrated in the last film that a good, striking, use of the previous material as musical building blocks can be carried out very well. I felt like this was a major step backwards for these movies and it’s now the fourth in a series which, like the previous three, has absolutely no musical continuity with any of the others. It’s just egos doing their own thing when they could have served a more functional purpose for the good of the whole canon of works.

And, by the way, King Kong has been around since 1933 whereas Godzilla is a relatively new character from 1954. Show some respect... there’s no way, despite Kong being stripped of his royal nomenclature for these movies, that Godzilla would beat him to near death. Kong's more dexterous. It just beggars belief. And, although the shout out to certain other Kong and kaiju movies where human intervention is necessary to restart (or in some films replace) a slowing heart is appreciated, the circumstances which took us to that point felt somehow unacceptable to me.

And so there you have it. Godzilla VS Kong looks great, has made huge gains at the box office but, sadly, under all the hullabaloo it’s just an empty and somehow inarticulate shell of a movie masquerading as something much bigger than it actually is. I can enjoy the moments of monster carnage and will probably do so again on Blu Ray but, as a consequential entry in the entire body of work of both the King Kong and Godzilla franchises, it leaves no mark and is, perhaps, best left forgotten. I was, at the end of the last picture, looking forward to this franchise continuing but now I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Everything seems to be thrown away and the dots that are meant join the films together make a tenuous and unnecessary trail at best. I can’t recommend this one, to be honest.

Mute

Noir Tender

Mute
2018 UK/Germany
Directed by Duncan Jones
Curzon Soho Screening 24/2/18

Duncan Jones is another one of those directors I've not really been sure of over the years. Kinda liked Moon (reviewed here), kinda didn't like Source Code (reviewed here) all that much and I didn't bother with Warcraft because I've never played the World of Warcraft game on which it's based (although I've heard it's a pretty good movie). I kinda got interested in Mute when I saw the director begin tweeting about it a while back but it's a film I nearly didn't get to see.

Why? One word... Netflix.

I'm not opposed to subscription channels as a whole. They have to make their money and I know Jones talks very highly of them in terms of getting the funding together to make this movie, which has been gestating for a very long time, from what I understand. So good for Netflix on that score. What I do object to is making these things exclusive to a channel as pretty much the only commercial option to both a main stream theatrical release and a physical media release. What that means is that people like myself who either can't justify the expense of subscribing or won't subscribe due to not wanting to what amounts to 'borrowing' a film from someone (via streaming, when it's actually deemed available, that is) as opposed to actually owning your own copy which you can put on your player anytime you want.

Furthermore, it's both a blow against the art of film and also something which is going lose money which the backers could have made back on a physical release.

To explain, films like this deserve to be seen on a cinema screen (especially a film like Mute... I'll get to it in a minute, I promise). They are made to be experienced on a big screen and you lack a little something if you've only watched it on your 'so smart' TV, iPad, computer or mobile phone. This is not what cinema is about. Also, the availability of cinemas in urban centres is a lot more accessible than having to sign up for a channel... especially if you only get to watch TV say, once a month if you're lucky.

As far as the people involved losing money? Well, as I said, not everybody is able to, or wants to, access Netflix. Which means the distribution of films like this are driven underground. I've already been offered a free copy of the movie on disc and at least one stranger on my daily bus ride to and from work just this week has told me about various 'free' streaming channels where I can watch all the newest movies without ever paying a penny. And it's not like I was even asking. So, yeah, I strongly believe Netflix should rethink their "exclusive to" business model because, you know, if people really want to see it without Netflix... I suspect they'll find a way.

Anyway... onto the movie because I got lucky on this one and spotted that the Curzon chain of cinemas in the UK have organised 'one a day' screenings of the film and I managed to get myself to one of these. Of course, the irony here is that the ticket cost me much more than the price of a month's subscription to Netflix but, having seen how visually rich and striking this one is, I'm kinda really glad I got to see it at the natural environment for the art of film... the cinema.

Out of the, admittedly small, amount of this director's films I've seen to date, I think Mute is my favourite.

The film starts as strongly as it continues with the main protagonist Leo as a boy where we see just why he is, as the title of the movie says, mute. We also see that the quaker family he was born into does nothing concrete to stop this condition from remaining and that's really all we need to know about this background so the rest of the movie, set many years later, shows Alexander Skarsgård  playing Leo, who works as a barman in a night club with his girlfriend Naadirah, played by Seyneb Saleh.

The story is set in the future and it seems to be around the same time that Jones' first feature, Moon was set. I know this because Sam Rockwell reprises his role as both Sam Bell and his clones in a cameo (basically making this movie MOON 2, in all but name). It would be true to say this futuristic environment in which this old 1940s style noir plot plays out is an extremely well crafted future version of Berlin. It would also be true to say that, with its occasional flying cars, overpopulated cityscapes and neon candy lighting, the film pays more than a little homage to Ridley Scott’s early masterpiece Blade Runner (reviewed by me here). In fact, it looks so much like it that it’s way much more true to the look and feel of that movie than the official sequel which was released last year. Mute truly captures the ‘designer gritty’ spectacle that Blade Runner 2049 (reviewed here) was lacking, as far as I’m concerned.

The film has a wonderful set up which gives you a glimps into the romance between the two main characters before going into a somewhat clichéd but no less effective film noir style mystery... as Naadirah goes missing and Leo has to try and discover what’s been going on in her life for this to happen and try to find her. It’s a simple set up and it follows a clear path towards an end goal while showcasing a credible world of future wonders and sleazy corruption.

The actors are razor sharp too.

This is one of Alexander Skarsgård’s greatest performances, if not his best, as he uses his facial expressions and body language to portray what’s going on in the head of the main protagonist. Seyneb Saleh is wonderful but, sadly, not in the film as much as I would have liked. Then you have Ant-Man himself, Paul Rudd, playing a kind of gangster’s doctor called Cactus Bill with his fellow surgeon Duck, played by Justin Theroux. Rudd is fantastic in this and the back and forth between him and Theroux, when they’re performing surgery or, in one case, a surgically inspired interrogation, is a deliberate and continued reference, both in look and dialogue delivery, to Trapper John and Hawkeye Pierce in the original Robert Altman movie version of MASH. It seems strange to have this here but it really works well, I have to say.

The film also has wonderful music from Clint Mansell, who scored Moon for Jones. Again, like the film itself, this wonderful score could almost be a sequel to the score for Blade Runner, with a little bit of Moon thrown in for good measure at some points. I really liked this and would buy it in a heartbeat if they would just give it a CD release. It seems odd that a masterwork of a score like this (and the same composer's score for the live action Ghost In The Shell, reviewed here) has not been given a proper soundtrack release. This needs to happen soon people. It’s a crime against filmanity... as is Netflix’s decision to hold this one back from a proper cinema release but... let’s not go there again.

The film seems to have polarised audiences with a lot of critics saying that the story keeps going off in different directions and tangents. That wasn’t my experience of it at all, I have to say. If anything the plot line was too simplistic, in a way... but the story line was always in plain sight and, although we kept cutting between two of the main character’s adventures (as we do in numerous films), it seemed pretty clear what was happening and its relevance to the ongoing story. I really think that if the newspaper critics couldn’t follow a storyline which, in all honesty, doesn’t have much of a complex tale to tell then... well... we really are in trouble, aren’t we?

My one slight grumble was that the film maybe went on a little too long past what I thought was its natural ending. I really didn’t think the last 15 or so minutes added much other than a slight shot at optimism for a couple of the characters. I really didn’t need to see anything more after Leo finds out just what happened to his girlfriend and I think a certain shot of him sitting under a tree would have been a better place for an ending to come.

It’s a minor grumble though and, for my part, I’d recommend Mute as both a great film and, most definitely, something which you should catch in its native habitat, i.e. - the cinema. If you like science fiction with a lot of heart, or 1940s film noirs for that matter, then Mute is for you. Dystopian societies this well realised are a bit of a rarity in cinema and this one is so well done that its definitely worth your time. Now keeping my eye on this director as a more serious artist to have on the radar. Looking forward to seeing what he’s up to in the future.

The Legend of Tarzan

Jungle Gym

The Legend of Tarzan
UK/Canada/USA 2016
Directed by David Yates
Warner Bros Blu Ray Zone B

Due to a coincidental turn of events, both the leading ladies in my life received a copy of The Legend of Tarzan as part of their Christmas haul this year. Firstly, I remembered my sexy lady friend had expressed an interest in seeing the movie at the time of its release but didn’t get an opportunity to see it... so I picked a copy up for her. Then, by a strange twist of fate, a few weeks later my mother also expressed an interest in seeing it... so she got one too (what is it with Tarzan and the ladies?).

Now, I wasn’t too keen on seeing this one myself. I had managed to, almost by accident, avoid it when it was released into cinemas earlier in the year and I didn’t think that I would have to bother to catch up to it. Alas, it was the first movie my mother wanted to watch on Boxing Day this year so, alas, I had to sit through it after all. Which ultimately, it turns out, was not actually a bad thing.

I’m not the biggest fan of Tarzan, it has to be said. Sure I used to watch the Ron Ely, Lex Barker, Jock Mahony and Gordon Scott versions of the character when I was a young ‘un. My favourite of all of them in my early years was, of course, the Johnny Weissmuller series of movies... there’s no topping those ones. I never got to see Buster Crabbe play the role but, you know, that one’s in the ‘to watch’ pile for sometime in the future. Edgar Rice Burroughs was never about Tarzan for me, though... he was all about John Carter of Mars, as far as I was concerned. The Tarzan stories were just a curiosity... although, like a lot of kids my age, I had the Mego action figure with the curious skin coloured costume made to look like skin slipped over the already skin coloured action figure plastic... never could figure that out.

So, yeah, I wasn’t exactly fussed about seeing this but I quite like Alexander Skarsgård as an actor... maybe not as much as his father but, heck, he’s a pretty good performer in my book and the agenda for this movie, it has to be said, seems to be one of getting a load of great performers together to get it all to work. So, supporting Skarsgård we have Margot Robbie, the always brilliant Samuel L. Jackson (who seems a bit of an anachronism in terms of his status in the time in which this movie is set... but I’m no expert so I might be wrong on that) and the often outstanding Christoph Waltz as the villain of the piece.

Now one of the things I was most afraid of when sitting down to watch the movie is that it would be yet another interminable ‘origins of the Lord of the Jungle’ movie but, as it happens, the writers wisely jettison the lengthy build up to the creation of Tarzan and go for a more interesting plot line while still, as it happens, trying to have their cake and eat it in terms of the origins department. That is to say, the film is set many years after Tarzan was ‘himself’ and he is now firmly enshrined in his Lord Greystoke personality... until a combination of the villain orchestrating his return to the jungle combined with Samuel L. Jackson’s ‘good guy on a mission to free the slaves’ character pushing from the other side of the equation forces Tarzan to return to his roots. Needless to say, things go pear shaped quickly and we have a jungle romp where the villain is trying to manipulate Tarzan towards his death for personal gain while taking Jane as a hostage.

Now, the origin of Tarzan is still included in the film but the writers have it as a slowly developing series of flashbacks inserted into the main narrative at regularly paced intervals. It’s not needlessly long and it also serves to inform the relationship between the main lead and his romantic interest via effective cinematic shorthand so... it not only backs up the main character but it’s also used to enrich the character arc and, above all, doesn’t outstay its welcome. I found this a much better solution to the usual ‘origins’ problems modern film-makers seem to want to needlessly lumber themselves with so... the movie gets a big tick with me for that.

The Legend Of Tarzan is nicely shot with some wonderful use of three (at least three) different colour palettes... with the scenes in London all being lit with a steely blue bent to show the coldly neutral prison that the main characters' lives have, almost without them realising it, become. These are offset with some yellowish, not quite sepia but heading to that kind of overt colour coding, flashback scenes and, as I was expecting... the full monty in terms of all the colours of the rainbow when we get to the contemporary (to the characters) jungle scenes. So the people behind the camera really thought about this one in an intelligent fashion and it really shows. The film is, in some ways, a joy to watch and I was much taken with both the visuals and, as I intimated earlier, the performances.

Where the film goes wrong is in some of the dialogue. A lot of it is good but, alas, I still think Christoph Waltz is not having good enough dialogue written for him. I’ve not seen him do anything to equal the lines he’s given in the Quentin Tarantino movies he’s starred in and, while Tarantino is a pretty good writer, I don’t think this is because he’s the only one able to write for Waltz. I just think the approach to his personality is not hitting the mark with a lot of his Hollywood productions, it has to be said. I mean, the dialogue they gave him in those terrible Clash Of The Clans adverts about a year ago was pretty good and a darn site better than a lot of the US made movies he’s been in... so I don’t think it should be this hard to get a screenwriter who understands the kind of material that Waltz absolutely excels at. And that’s really not knocking Waltz... he still does a phenomenal job here but... I just felt his scenes could have done with a lot more dialogue to play around with than what he gets here.

Still, that’s a minor complaint in an otherwise cool movie and, although I was less taken with Rupert Gregson-Williams' completely appropriate but perhaps overly clichéd score to the movie, I overall had a good time with this and some of the dialogue was, indeed, excellent. The chemistry between Alexander Skarsgård and Samuel L. Jackson, for example, really works well and they should maybe put the two in more films together, methinks.

And that’s all I got to say about that one. Not the best Tarzan movie I’ve seen but a lot better than most of the attempts made in, maybe, the last 30 years or so by a long chalk. If you like the Tarzan character then this is an enjoyable, if empty, take on the character and you should find yourself suitably entertained by a fine action film. It’s never going to get anywhere near my 2016 top ten list but it’s certainly not the film I was expecting it to be. So The Legend Of Tarzan is well worth a look if you have some free time on your hands, I reckon.