The Northman

Official Australian release date: 21/4/22.
Viewed: 21/4/22.
Director: Robert Eggers
Actors: Alexander Skarsgard, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman
Genre: Action / Drama
Rating: MA

‘The Northman’ is a viking film with a hint of Shakespeare thrown in. It follows the journey of Amleth (Skarsgard), his mother Gudrun (Kidman), his father King Aurvandil (Hawke) and uncle Fjolnir (Bang). Olga (Taylor-Joy) comes along later as the love interest. When the king is killed, Amleth vows to avenge him, setting up the plot. I wish there was more of Hawke & Dafoe, but they have fun with the screentime they get.

Skarsgard’s traps almost outshine some of his acting, with him being extremely buff for this role. The scenery of Iceland (and lots of Ireland standing in for other Nordic regions) looks amazing, but isn’t always used as much as it could be. The score’s OK – lots of guttural chanting and drumming. Trying to be somewhat faithful to the period, being set in ~900AD, there’s plenty of violence and gore, but it’s not incessant and there’s no large battles. Still, some is pretty graphic.

At it’s heart, it’s that age old tale of love or hate – you can only ever really choose one. This is an easy answer for Amleth for most of the film, being driven purely by revenge – until it’s not. I really liked the night scenes when Eggers make it a silver-ish black & white, but I just felt there was something missing to make this a great film.
 
Overall: Good viking revenge action film, if not quite perfect
 
Gav’s Rating: 3 stars.

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Official Australian release date: 14/4/22.
Viewed: 16/4/22.
Directors: Dan Kwan & Daniel Schinert
Actors: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis
Genre: Action / Comedy
Rating: MA

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ is a simple story about a family’s search for meaning. It also happens to be a mind-bending, multiple-universe, kung-fu, sci-fi epic! Evelyn (Yeoh) and her husband Waymond (Quan – Short Round from ‘Temple of Doom’!) run a laundromat and have some issues with their marriage, their daughter Joy (Hsu) and Evelyn’s father, Gong Gong (Hong). What starts out as a family drama doesn’t take long to turn into a fight to save the multiverse when another Waymond shows up to enlist Evelyn’s help.

From the directors of ‘Swiss Army Man’, “the Daniels” sure know how to do surreal well, but make sure there’s plenty of laughs and idiosyncratic comedy. The alternate realities are explained quickly and simply – no time is wasted and the plot and action is always moving along. Yeoh, Hsu and Quan are all great, as is Jamie Lee Curtis in her role(s). Yeoh should get extra credit both for the stunts/fights at her age (it is 20 years since ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’!), as well as pulling off both a martial arts expert and boring housewife at once.

While there’s plenty of bonkers thing going on – Hsu’s costumes are excellent, some hilarious sex jokes, great/unexpected use of “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)”– the heart of the film is the relationship between Evelyn & Joy and Evelyn & Waymond. There’s some sad moments and some beautiful ones, especially the quiet desert scenes, but we’re left with a great underlying message of love and kindness giving the world meaning.
 
Overall: Poignant, unique, fun, interesting, heartfelt – a must-see!
 
Gav’s Rating: 4 stars.

The Batman

Official Australian release date: 3/3/22.
Viewed 2/3/22.
Director: Matt Reeves
Actors: Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright
Genre: Action / Drama
Rating: M

 

‘The Batman’ gives us 6^th film-version of Bruce Wayne in Robert Pattinson and a lot of people are asking “do we need another Batman film?” After watching this, the answer is “yes”. From the director of the last two (great) ‘Planet of the Apes’ films, this is a brooding and dark, true-to-form Batman film, much closer to Tim Burton’s films than the Snyder & Schumacher films. It has some aspects in similar with the Nolan trilogy, but is different enough to stand alone.
 
This is a younger Batman/Bruce, and does well to not re-tell the story of his parents’ deaths. Essential to any good Batman film is a good Alfred and Serkis is great. The entire cast is really good – Selina (Kravitz), Lieutenant Gordon (Wright), the Riddler (Dano), Falcone (Turturro) and Oswald/Penguin (Farrell) – who is literally unrecognisable in his make-up. Dano brings a great energy to the Riddler and makes him seem realistic in the world we live in – definitely no trace of Jim Carey here! The scenes with Bruce & Selina work really well.

While this is very dark, both visually and thematically – including the repeated use of Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ – it really suits the noir vibe of the mystery that has Bruce & Gordon trying to solve the Riddler’s puzzles/murders. They make Gotham very believable – always raining – and there’s a great car chase scene, as well as plenty of realistic hand-to-hand combat. While it’s long – almost 3 hours – it doesn’t drag and the pacing is good, with the non-action components being as exciting as the fight scenes. By the end, I was certainly convinced by the validity of Pattinson, the suit and this film.
 
Overall: Well-made, gritty, low-tech noir mystery/thriller.
 
Gav’s Rating: 4 stars.

Studio 666

Official Australian release date: 24/2/22.
Viewed 26/2/22.
Director: BJ McDonnell
Actors: Dave Ghohl, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel, Whitney Cummings
Genre: Horror / Comedy
Rating: R
 

‘Studio 666’ is a Foo Fighters pet project, poking fun at themselves, rockstar excess and horror all in a fun film. The plot is simple – Dave (singer/songwriter), Nate (bass), Chris (guitar), Pat (guitar), Taylor (drums) & Rami (keyboards) are wanting to do something different for their 10^th album, so end up recording in a haunted house. The rest is mostly an ‘Evil Dead’ rip-off!
 
Most of the fun comes from watching the band, who are clearly not actors, have fun with the absurdness/silliness. There are some good cameos from actual actors – Samantha (Cummings) the neighbour, Jeremy (Garlin) the manager and Darren (Forte) the delivery guy. And while it’s semi-funny, it’s definitely very gory and I think the death-count got to 9. Just not sure it needed to be 1 hour 45min – might’ve been a good 30min TV episode.
 
If you’re a Foo fan and appreciate the humour in their video clips, you should enjoy this. Lots of little inside jokes and they play against their nice-guy personas on purpose. Still, they’re definitely not actors! Only one actual Foo Fighters song from ‘Medicine At Midnight’ is used, during the credits – the song they play during the film is actually pretty good, even though it’s in “L” key.
 
Overall: Silly, gory, dumb rock’n’roll.
 
Gav’s Rating: 2.5 stars.

The Matrix Resurrections

Official Australian release date: 26/12/21. Viewed: 27/12/21.
Director: Lana Wachowski
Actors: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Henwick
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
Rating: M

 

‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is a semi-reboot, coming 18 years after the trilogy was completed. We don’t start with Neo (Reeves), but rather Bugs (Henwick), a Trinity-like character and a refreshed-Morpheus (Abdul-Mateen), as they search for Neo in the Matrix. Turns out Neo & Trinity (Moss) are both alive inside the Matrix, but in new simulations, where they don’t know each other or their past lives and Mr Anderson just so happens to have created a video game called “The Matrix”. It gets a bit meta in parts.

The film takes quite a while to establish Neo’s new normal, with the therapist/Analyst (Patrick-Harris) and Smith (Groff) as his business partner, as well as the new real humans – Bugs and the others that don’t really get much screen time. Niobe (Pinkett Smith) is back as one of the survivors of Zion. Once Neo is rescued, it becomes an attempt to free Trinity too. Not really too much to the plot otherwise, for good or bad. Henwick, Groff and Patrick-Harris are good, while Moss feels like a secondary character.

One of the main issues is that the CGI on the original trilogy was so groundbreaking, that it now seems run-of-the-mill. There’s not much new here in terms of CGI or action scenes, especially after what happened in ‘Revolutions’ (probably worth a re-watch to those that write it off). Sticks to the core tenet of Neo & trinity’s love being able to disrupt the Matrix, but doesn’t add too much to the overall Matrix mythology. Definitely not a bad film, just not exceptional. I assume there will be more films...

Overall: Nice nostalgia trip, without being revolutionary.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Official Australian release date: 16/12/21. Viewed: 19/12/21.
Director: Jon Watts
Actors: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Rating: M

 

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is the final piece of the MCU/Sony trilogy, all in under five years. It’s also Holland’s 6^th time playing Peter Parker and essentially serves as ‘Doctor Strange’ 1.5, bridging to ‘Multiverse of Madness’ next year. This film picks up right where ‘Farm From Home’ left off, with the world now knowing Peter is Spider-Man, which make things very difficult for him, MJ (Zendaya), Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), Ned (Batalon) and Happy (Favreau).

Peter goes to Dr Strange (Cumberbatch) for some magical help, which triggers a multiverse “issue”, with – I don’t think this is a spoiler after all the trailers & press – villains from the pre-MCU Spider-Man films being pulled into the MCU. This includes Dr Octopus (Molina), Green Goblin (Dafoe), Electro (Foxx), Sandman (Haden Church) and Lizard (Ifans) all trying to figure out why this Spider-Man is different. It borrows a bit from ‘Into the Spider-Verse’, which is a good thing, as that film is superb. Along with them, the big reveal is that the multiverse Peter Parker’s – Toby Maguire (now 46) and Andrew Garfield (now 38) – are also pulled into this world. This provides both some funny and insightful moments.

Peter’s close to losing control a few times here, and the final act does a good job of raising the stakes and helping him realise his role, his morality and mortality. There’s quite a few touching moments, and with all MCU films, the ensemble works well here – it’s great watching Peter, MJ and Ned together, and it’s not too corny having the other two Spider-Men involved. Dafoe reminds us of what a good actor he is. All the throw-back villains and Maguire/Garfield could’ve made this seem like a lame cash-grab, but it really works. I had great time and enjoyed the simultaneous happy and sad ending.

Overall: Excellently-executed Spider-Man story.

Gav's Rating: 4.5 stars.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Official Australian release date: 1/1/22. Viewed: 12/12/21.
Director: Jason Reitman
Actors: Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon
Genre: Sci-Fi / Comedy
Rating: PG

‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ is the 4^th Ghostbusters film and while OK in parts, is probably on par with the most recent film. It takes about an hour to set-up Callie (Coon) bringing her two teenage kids – Phoebe (Grace) & Trevor (Wolfhard) – to Oklahoma, because they inherit their estranged grandad’s farm. Turns out he was Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis’ character in the two original films). We also meet Phoebe’s teacher, Grooberson (Rudd) who helps out.

The next-gen of ghostbusters is set-up with Podcast (Kim) befriending Phoebe and Trevor befriending Lucky (O’Connor). Together, the four of them set out to find what’s causing the earthquakes using some of the stuff they find in Spengler’s basement. There’s plenty of throwbacks with the plasma-guns, car and other equipment.

The third act picks up pace, and there’s some funny moments, but unfortunately it’s probably at it’s best when it’s a teen mystery/adventure, before it all becomes a little too familiar and predictable at the end. Grace is good, but it needed more Rudd and no-one else has that much to do.

Overall: Passable reboot.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.