Review: The Northman

The secret to The Northman's success is simple: it delivers everything you could want from a Viking movie. Unlike a lot of other genres, Viking movies are fairly straightforward. So long as there's some brutal violence, references to honour and bravery and Odin, a funeral or two, some intrigue and betrayal, and longboats attack a village, you can't go far wrong. The Northman? It doesn't go wrong at all.

Based on the saga that Shakespeare based Hamlet on, the story is a superficially straightforward tale of revenge, as young prince Amleth sees his father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) betrayed by his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang), swears vengeance, flees into the wilderness, grows up to be Alexander Skarsgard, and realises that a life as a brutal killer just isn't enough after a mystical encounter (with Bjork no less) reminds him of his fate.

Disguising himself as a slave, he sneaks aboard a ship heading to Iceland where his uncle - who has claimed his mother (Nicole Kidman) for his own - is now living on a glorified farm, having lost the family kingdom to King Harold. On the journey he meets Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy), who becomes his partner in crime as a fellow slave on Fjolnir's farm. And there's a lot of crime to be committed.

Director Robert Eggers' previous films (The VVitch, The Lighthouse) were mostly small-scope exercises in cranking up tension through character. This is more mainstream (with a US$70 million budget to go with it), yet manages to maintain enough of his vision to never feel generic or by-the-numbers. There are plenty of offbeat touches here, but the core of the story - Amleth's quest for revenge, even if it destroys him - is always clear and at the heart of every scene.

Visually this is often striking, especially in the moments of religious power and awe, but it's always in service to the story; Iceland's epic grimness is there to underline the remote and hostile nature of the environment and the people who dwell there. Likewise there's plenty of slaying, but the gore and brutality is rarely lingered on - and when it is, its to show the depths to which Amleth is willing to go to achieve his goals.

If there's any drawback to this relatively straightforward approach, it's that at times the story occasionally feels a little too simple, especially during the lengthy middle section. That said, things become more complex as the film progresses, and the matter-of-fact approach to the supernatural (where it's shown to be a central part of their lives, but not to the extent that magic happens... or does it?) does add another layer to Amleth's Big Payback.

The Northman is an all-too-rare example of a well-made genre film that satisfies on just about every level. Even the lengthy run time - two and a half hours if you sit through the credits - feels earned. It's the story of a shirtless warrior with a magic sword (that can only be unsheathed at night!) murdering his way through the people who took his family from him; what more could you ask for?

- Anthony Morris

Review: Ambulance

Early on in Ambulance one of master bank robber Danny Sharp's crime crew sneeringly asks another casually dressed member "who wears Birkinstocks to a bank robbery?" The answer is, of course, an idiot - as proven slightly later when the Birkinstocks-wearer stumbles in front of the getaway van during their botched robbery, gets run over, and is last seen being dragged out from under going "what happened to my [clearly mangled beyond repair] legs?" while the cops spray the street around him with automatic gun fire.

The thing is, everyone here is - to put it bluntly - an idiot. And not just in a typical action movie way: everyone is aggressively stupid and gleefully makes the wrong decision all the time. The movie wouldn't work - and surprisingly it often does work, though the constant excess is a bit excessive  - if there was even one sensible character who stopped a moment to think before shouting some snarky quip or generic action line. 

This would usually be a problem in a heist movie, a genre where audiences like to be surprised by smart twists and characters who know what they're doing. But this is a Michael Bay heist movie where everything is dialed up to 11; footage from a swooping drone doing barrel-rolls over central LA can hide a lot of problems when your script requires everyone to constantly screw up.

Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) is presumably named Sharp to distract us from the fact he isn't. In fact, his entire multi-million dollar heist - which has to happen RIGHT NOW - relies on him bringing on board his brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a man who has turned his back on crime and is actively opposed to returning to the world of crime both his father and brother occupy. 

But of course Will does (this is America, so he needs the cash to pay for his wife's medical treatment), which is handy as he's an ex-solider with excellent combat driving skills... oh wait, he's not the getaway driver - some chump who panics, drives off, and runs over one of his buddies is. 

And yes, the heist goes wrong, in large part because the LAPD's SIS unit - led by Captain Munroe (Garret Dillahunt) - knew they were coming. Of course, stopping them before the robbery would be too easy; as we're told multiple times, this unit "lays traps"... and then abandons them the second there's a problem.

Danny, Will, and sixteen million dollars manage to escape a closing net by hijacking an ambulance with EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza Gonzalez) inside. They only get out because there's a cop (shot by Will) in back being worked on, which introduces the only interesting subtext (it's the only subtext at all) to this film: cops are brutal murderous thugs.

Throughout the film Danny is constantly worried about the idea of killing a cop, because in this world - and, let's be honest, often in the real world - if you kill a cop, the cops will murder you the very first chance they get. Fortunately for fans of carnage, Ambulance also depicts all cops as complete idiots so desperate to apprehend a criminal they're constantly crashing cars into everything around them, including multiple clearly avoidable accidents that are obviously fatal for the car's occupants.

On screen LA is often presented as a melting pot where everyone has a story, and so it proves here. Even supporting characters get a scene or moment to display their one character-defining trait. Munroe drives around in a tiny car with a giant dog; Cam is a former speed addict who doesn't do emotional connection; there's a FBI bank robbery expert (with a connection to Danny) who asks "do we have to pay for the stupid questions?" during his marriage counseling.

Not that we're expected to care about any of these people; even Will's "good guy in over his head" arc is muddled (he just keeps on shooting people). The real focus in this 136 minute movie is the 100 minutes or so of car chase through LA, though most of the time it's more that the ambulance drives around while the cops merely follow. 

It's definitely entertaining in a shouty way, but while there's always something happening - removing a spleen, dodging snipers, singing along to Christopher Cross - it almost always feels like the same thing. 

Even the moments that should be a diversion from the main action are presented at the same extreme pitch. Bay doesn't trust any other part of this film (not even Gyllenhaal in motor-mouth mode) to keep us watching, so he keeps the camera moving and the explosions coming until everything blurs together and having a bunch of cops shooting at a clearly remote controlled car because they believe the manikin in the drivers seat is a real person is just another part of an average LA day.

- Anthony Morris

Review: X

Horror movies have rarely been scared to throw a little sex into the mix. The slasher genre's 80s heyday was all about teens getting it on before getting offed - so much so that when 90s versions started leaving sex out it seemed more like ditching a cliche than losing something essential. Now writer / director Ti West's X has returned brutal murder sprees to their sexy roots... though not quite in the way you might expect.

The year is 1979, and a group of aspiring porn stars led by producer Wayne (Martin Henderson, giving off serious Matthew McConaughey vibes) and his fame-seeking girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), are in a van heading to a cabin they've rented on an out-of-the-way farm outside Huston. If you're already getting Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original) vibes, congratulations - though a thoroughly messed-up dead cow on the road is a helpfully blunt reminder that we're all just meat in the end.

Farm owner Howard (Stephen Ure) is a crotchety old type who disapproves of young folk and would disapprove even more of what they're getting up to if he knew about it. His decrepit wife (make sure to check the end credits) is off in a world of her own, though there are hints that her view of what the kids are up to would be somewhat different from her husbands.

Wayne's crew are making a porno titled The Farmer's Daughters; roughly the first half of X is the story of a plucky group of free-spirited sex fans getting it on in front of the camera, with the occasional spot of behind-the-scenes drama as would-be auteur director RJ (Owen Campbell) discovers his shy boom-mike holding girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) doesn't quite share his disdain for porn.

There's plenty of creepy moments and ominous foreboding going on (plus a lake with alligators), but this section works just fine as a salute to the golden age of DIY porn filmmaking. The characters are lively and interesting, there's nothing judgmental about their approach to sex, and their get-rich-from-porn plans seem no more deluded than any other get-rich scheme. 

And then the murders begin. This isn't really a brutal gore-fest, though nobody dies easy; the focus is on the suspense of who'll die next and the inventiveness of the kills (fans of actual Farmer's Daughter's sex jokes will enjoy the way they're referenced in at least one death). Tonally the horror is the mirror image of the sex; it's never truly confronting or extreme, aiming more for the satisfaction that comes from seeing a well-crafted tale where all the pieces fit. 

There's the occasional gesture towards deeper themes - it seems getting old sucks when you've built your life on being sexy - but true to its porn heritage most of the fun is on the surface. The characters (and the performances) are strong enough to make sure this avoids the usual pitfalls that come with making a film about film-making, giving the slaughter just enough of an emotional core to keep it from being a collection of flashy slashes; you'll hate to see them go, but you'll love to watch them leave.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Uncharted

Just from watching Uncharted, it wouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Tom Holland was a massive fan of the game it's based on and turning it into a movie was a lifelong ambition - he's constantly giving it his all in every scene while those around him seem five seconds away from taking out their phones to check their social media stats. 

Then again, it's just as likely his management team sat him down and told him he can't be the Spider-Man guy forever and if he doesn't kick-start another franchise soon then his days of fancy Hollywood premieres will be over. Remember that guy who played Captain America? Not any more you don't.

Just look at co-star Mark Wahlberg, who well within living memory was the biggest box office draw on the planet (and was originally cast in the lead here a decade ago) but now seems lucky to be a sidekick in a video game adaptation where his character largely vanishes from screen every time there's an action sequence. It's a weird choice for him, as he's never given off the kind of "lovable rogue" vibes this role requires: you can easily imagine him cheating you and ripping you off, just not the "ha ha, only kidding" part.

The story here is yet another Hollywood treasure quest complete with clues and death traps and codes and maps, none of which make a lick of sense on any level. Seriously, if you want to get any enjoyment out of this film at all do not spend a single second thinking about any of the puzzles; as you might expect, this is a problem for the movie as a whole.

Holland is Nathan Drake, orphan turned bartender and pickpocket, who a): gets a lot of mysterious postcards from his runaway older brother Sam, who shared his obsession with the past and pirates and treasure and so on, and b): has Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Wahlberg) turn up at his bar one evening in a way that might make you think he's really Sam but no, he's a completely unrelated treasure hunter who wants Nathan's help and figures negging him like it was still 2014 is the way to get it.

All you really need to know from there is that Nathan gets into a lot of (not bad) action scenes that require him to be very flexible, there's a running joke about his old cigarette lighter (that doesn't light) that never pays off, and the hunt requires them to go to all the usual locations - you know, fancy auction house, catacombs under a European city, the jungle primeval.

Also, you can't trust anyone when it comes to treasure - including seemingly helpful Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), seemingly unhelpful Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), and rival treasure seeker Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas). And that all-action flash-forward scene the film opens with? That's about as good as it gets.

Holland is the real draw here and he gives it all he's got, providing a charming, relentlessly likable performance that's easily the best thing about this film (and the only reason to wish for a sequel). Everyone else is fully aware they're in a limp jumble of stale Hollywood adventure cliches; he's the one taking it all seriously, presumably because this is his big chance to show he can make bank out of a Spider-Man costume. 

Or any costume really. If it's surprising how often he either ends up in a soaking wet top or entirely shirtless, that's only because Marvel movies are so remorselessly sexless even the slightest reminder that Holland is a movie star - and those guys are traditionally meant to be objects of desire - now seems more startling than any rusty death trap.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Blacklight

Liam Neeson's last team-up with writer-director Mark Williams was the surprisingly sturdy Honest Thief, the kind of late-career Neeson thriller that stays firmly within the audience's comfort zone while providing just enough quirky character moments and decent action to make it an entertaining 90-odd minutes. Now the gang is back with Blacklight, which seems to promise more of the same but ends up reaching for something a little different.

Travis Block (Neeson) specialises in extracting FBI agents from undercover operations too hot to handle. He's been doing this for years off the books for Gabriel Robinson (Aidan Quinn), who's now the head of the FBI and the closest thing Block has to a friend. But he does have a family: his daughter Amanda (Claire van der Boom), who is more than a little wary of her often absent father, and a young granddaughter, who he's rapidly training to be as paranoid as he is.

Meanwhile, the actual story involves Dusty Crane (Taylor John Smith), an undercover agent who's had a severe attack of conscience after being involved in an operation that ended in the murder of a high profile politician. He's trying to tell his story to anyone who'll listen, which (as he's clearly a little unhinged) just means online journalist Mira Jones (Emmy Raver-Lampman). Now Block's latest job is to calm Crane down and bring him in without too many car chases through Melbourne's Southbank precinct pretending to be Washington DC.

While Neeson's presence suggests this will be yet another enjoyable opportunity for him to take out the trash, this is in fact a political thriller where Neeson's character spends much of the film playing second fiddle to the genre's traditional leads - the whistle-blower and the crusading journalist. He's given various bits of personal business to keep him occupied, and there are a handful of striking and well thought out action scenes, but at times this feels like he's been dropped into a story that really doesn't need him.

The flip side of this is that he's still the heart of the film, playing a character that's the most interesting thing on screen. Less may be more, but almost everything about Block feels like it deserved more screen time; a sequence towards the end where he panics over losing contact with his family is more memorable than the various generic threats to democracy discussed around it.

Part of the problem is that there's no mystery behind the conspiracy. We almost always know what's going on before Block does, so many of his early scenes are just waiting for him to get caught up. It's noticable that the few scenes that feature actual surprises - or just Block professionally doing his job - are easily the most effective here. 

Despite the at-times stylish direction and strong performances, too often the story in Blacklight gets in its own way: half as much going on (leaving more room for Block to electrocute the bad guys and train a pre-schooler to always count the exits) would have been twice as engaging.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Death on the Nile

The title of Kenneth Branagh's second - and with Disney having left this on the shelves for well over a year, almost certainly last - Agatha Christie adaptation promises viewers two things. Unfortunately, here the Nile is only adequate at best, a mix of average CGI and the occasional cutaway to reed farmers or chomping crocodiles; Death, on the other hand, does more than its fair share of the heavy lifting.

Almost from the beginning, Christie's puzzlebox mysteries were scorned by fellow crime writers as bloodless things detached from reality. Branagh seems to have taken this criticism firmly on board, even as, close to a century later, the mystery genre continues to thrive on contrivance and disposable characters. A quirky, self-referential, post-modern take on the genre this is not.

Opening with a WWI sequence that's both a grim origin story for Poirot's mustache and the first sign that this is a tale where love is firmly entwined with death, things muddle around for a while in pre-WWII London and Egypt until Poirot's enjoyment of the Great Pyramids is interrupted by old chum Bouc (Tom Bateman), who drags him along to a fancy honeymoon party where it turns out Poirot knows the main players but not the combination they've settled down in.

Extremely wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot, charming and likable) has just wed hunky lunk Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer, entertainingly solid), who - last time we saw him - was dry humping Linnet's bestie Jacqueline (Emma Mackie, sympathetically tormented) on a London nightclub dancefloor. Now she's turned stalker, Linnet is understandably freaking out, and she asks Poirot to tag along in the hopes his private investigator skills can keep her safe.

Meanwhile, literally everyone else in the party has a reason to be a suspect if something dodgy were to happen while they're cruising the Nile. There's a disgruntled maid, a shady lawyer, a doctor still carrying a torch for Linnet, a couple of old biddies who either miss their former wealth or won't stop talking about how they gave it away, and on it goes.

It's not until the halfway mark that we actually get to the (first) murder on the Nile. That may be too long for mystery buffs, but the attempt to give the roster of suspects at least some life - and a few pre-murder scenes to allow the impressive cast to play their characters as actual people - will be appreciated by those who either know the outcome or guessed it the second the events leading to murder kick off.

Likewise, despite the 30s-era glamour and luxury, everyone here takes everything extremely seriously (even Russell Brand as the lovelorn doctor never cracks a smile). If you're on this film's wavelength and not just wishing you were watching Knives Out instead, Branagh's approach as director is clearly the right way to go. This story is lightweight fluff any way you look at it, a puzzle built around unlikely people and contrivances; pointing any of this out, even for an instant, would make the whole thing collapse.

No wonder then that Branagh's Poirot is - silly mustache aside - a man tormented by lost love, an OCD sufferer scared to let anyone in, trapped on a boat where people keep being murdered and he's powerless to stop it. 

Terrified by the way death follows him and yet only truly happy when staring at the Pyramids (which are, after all, just giant tombstones), the world's greatest detective is definitely the last person anyone should invite onto a pleasure cruise.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Moonfall

One of the classics of (literal) lunacy in paperback form is George H. Leonard's Someone Else is on Our Moon, a book based entirely on blurry photos of the moon's surface which the author has stared at for hours until he finally saw alien machines and hatches and loads of other cool stuff. That's not a joke: he actually advises his readers to do the same. There's a reason why the cover says "Startlingly Illustrated".

Presumably Roland Emmerich felt simply adapting this directly to the screen would have resulted in a film of limited appeal, as it would largely consist of the author harassing NASA scientists while arguing with fellow crackpots about exactly which moons in our solar system were actually alien spaceships ("all of them?"). Instead, Moonfall takes the basic idea of Leonard's book, bolts on a standard space disaster movie template, and drags things out for 130 minutes when 90 would have done just fine.

Ten years ago Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) were happy astronauts on a space shuttle satellite repair mission when Things Went Wrong. A supporting character died, Harper was disgraced, and ten years later he's a earth-bound bum whose wife has left him for some rich dude (Michael Pena), his eldest son (Charlie Plummer) is a hot-rodding delinquent, and who really cares because the moon is about to crash into the Earth and kill us all.

While NASA deputy chief Fowler (who is now divorced but has a Chinese exchange student) is concerned about this top secret news, crackpot loser K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) has also figured out the moon is getting closer by using stolen telescope time to calculate stuff and not by looking at the moon and saying "looks bigger than usual". 

Nobody at NASA will take him seriously for the exact same reasons nobody took George H. Leonard seriously, and by the time we get to see a meeting of the "megastructure" nutjob society ("megastructure" equals "the moon is a spaceship") it really does start to feel like the production company owes Leonard a few bucks.

The moon gets closer, people start to panic, Harper turns out to have been right, Houseman also turns out to be right, everyone else in a uniform is wrong, Donald Sutherland is in the film for maybe three minutes as his character from JFK yet again, and swarms of evil nanotechology are eating humanity's attempts to solve the moon problem. Before long a rag-tag group of previously mentioned heroes are setting off in a spaceship they got out of a museum with "Fuck the Moon" painted on the side to save the day while their loved ones drive around on an increasingly wacky Earth.

Fans of reality will enjoy the way this ignores pretty much everything we know about how gravity and oxygen works, while the big ticket scenes of devastation often lack the required massive carnage and city-wide destruction. Instead, we get meteor showers and giant tides (Chicago gets trashed by both), plus car chases with and without guns, which seems like a failure of imagination in a movie where people are literally being dragged off the surface of the Earth. Fortunately for the plot, more than one extremely heavy object suddenly becomes super-light when the new, closer moon is overhead to lend a hand.

On the plus side, the core cast are likable enough, there are some evil gun-toting rednecks who like to rob refugees, and once the megastructure side of things comes into play in the second half there's more than enough quasi-epic silliness going on to make up for the relatively unimpressive - numerous ominous shots of a giant moon looming over an increasingly shattered Earth aside - disaster on the ground.

As is often the case with this kind of film, the best way to enjoy it is in hindsight as a barely connected series of ludicrous moments. Though even the non-disaster scenes have an enjoyably off-kilter humour to them: if you don't like the scene where the hero literally tries to outright bribe a judge in the lobby of the courthouse, maybe you'll enjoy a trigger happy millionaire Aspen survivalist named (of course) Karen.

- Anthony Morris