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The Northman (2022)

Started by Dusty Substance, December 20, 2021, 06:09:37 PM

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#30
Quote from: dead-ced-dead on April 12, 2022, 06:11:07 PMWitches you say?

WITCHES!

Did anyone see that "Valhalla Rising"?
That's the first film that came to mind when I heard about this and imagined what it might be like.
You know, A24-style, babba's first "boil in the bag" arthouse flick for midwit pseuds. Yeeeeeah?

It's flawed, definitely, but there's something really nice about the pace of it.
You get these lovely serene, atmospheric, picturesque, melancholic longueurs, and then a quick spike of the old ultra violence to keep you awake.

If you're in a flat mood or hungover or something, I'd recommend it. It goes down well. Maybe it just caught me in the right mood, but I seemed to like it a lot more than most people I've seen talking about it on forums.

Noodle Lizard

I've seen a lot of people decide to compare/contrast with Valhalla Rising, but it seems to be based on little more than the fact they're both vaguely "artsy" films with Vikings in them. Valhalla Rising had very sparse dialogue, whereaas this appears to be largely dialogue-driven (like Eggers' other two films). This one's also got a huge cast of high-profile actors, whereas Valhalla Rising had a pre-Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen and the dad from Billy Elliot. We're also learning that the budget and scope of The Northman is astronomically higher ($70m+ compared with VR's $5m). Just based on what we've seen, and their respective synopses, I'd say Valhalla Rising shared more common ground with something like Aguirre, Wrath of God than with The Northman.

I did like Valhalla Rising a lot, mind you, so I wouldn't be too sad to see more of that. But I'm also not about to go in expecting Valhalla Rising Del Två.

Twit 2

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on April 12, 2022, 10:43:28 PMReally good New Yorker article.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/robert-eggerss-historical-visions-go-mainstream

Cheers. For me, the reason Eggers is a talent to watch is that he combines lots of elements well: filmmaking chops, great scripts and dialogue, originality, ambition, and entertainment. The right mix, which is why he can draw a mainstream and art house audience to the same film. I can stroke my chin aplenty at his craft but ultimately I'm just massively entertained.

I love his contempt for "coverage". Reminds me of Herzog. I know the latter's shooting style bemused/scared the crew on Bad Lieutenant. Cage, correctly I think, and similarly to Hawke, took the "minimal takes, no coverage" dogma as a sign of confidence and competence.

Indomitable Spirit

Struggled with Eggers' films ever since I found out he looks like he works in one of those trendy workwear shops that sells five hundred quid Patagonia jackets.

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on April 13, 2022, 03:02:57 AMI've seen a lot of people decide to compare/contrast with Valhalla Rising, but it seems to be based on little more than the fact they're both vaguely "artsy" films with Vikings in them. Valhalla Rising had very sparse dialogue, whereaas this appears to be largely dialogue-driven

Yeah, it was just what came to mind when I first heard about it.
I do try to avoid trailers and pretty much anything at all about films, I like to go into everything as blind as possible, but I couldn't help it with this one. You're right, definitely seems like more of a talkie!
Hope it's good.

Twit 2


iamcoop

Just saw this.

It's good.

Obviously big budget but still retaining some of Eggsy boys madness.

If this is what he does with big budget movies I think we're in safe hands.

It's not perfect but I was gripped throughout.

I would've preferred
Spoiler alert
more Björk
[close]
though.

And it was lovely to get a
Spoiler alert
cameo from Finchey at the end, looking like a King Crimson roadie. He really is a great rep.
[close]

I would do a better review but I'm a terrible film critic and I'm sure other people in this thread would do a far better job.

8 audible guffs out of 10.

checkoutgirl

5.5/10 for me. It was fine but there were few surprises, very linear with foreshadowing and then that thing happening 10 or 20 minutes later. A seemingly endless piece around the middle in the new encampment that went on for too long, it was at least an hour.

surreal

Just off to see this now... brb

Exposition

The lesser of the three Eggers films, but far more exciting than movies at this budget level are usually allowed to be. It manages to find a really good balance between being easily the most accessible of his films, but also maintaining his idiosyncratic choices. I just wonder how much a regular audience will get into that stuff lol, but the screening was surprisingly packed.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on April 11, 2022, 04:19:48 PMI bet one of the characters ends the film by doing some crazy laughing. It seems to be Eggers thing.

Can anyone confirm this happens at the end of this one? I loved the crazy distorted laughing at the end of The Lighthouse, and I'm hoping it becomes a running theme in his films, like Kubrick and the malevolent grin thing.

McDead

Thought this was absolute bollocks, though Bjork was very good.


Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on April 16, 2022, 07:22:22 PMCan anyone confirm this happens at the end of this one? I loved the crazy distorted laughing at the end of The Lighthouse, and I'm hoping it becomes a running theme in his films, like Kubrick and the malevolent grin thing.

Spoiler alert
No. But there's lots of mad shouting to make up for it.
[close]

Marv Orange

Not particularly emotionally engaging, but definitely one of the most filmiest films I've seen at the cinema for a long time. Worth a watch

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on April 13, 2022, 03:02:57 AMWe're also learning that the budget and scope of The Northman is astronomically higher ($70m+ compared with VR's $5m
This is interesting. There's been a lot of talk about the decline of mid-budget cinema over the last decade. Just recently though, there's been this, Morbius (crap, but relatively inexpensive at 75 million) and the even cheaper Ambulance (40m, from Michael Bay of all people). The last two have flopped, so it's obviously too early to call this a resurgence, but it could be possibly potentially positive, perhaps.

Thomas

Light spoilers here, can't figure out how to retrospectively apply the banners:

Simple Viking saga, big cinema experience. I particularly liked the ambiguous moments of mythological perception, as when he battled an undead old fella for the sword (but then actually didn't), and the ascensions to Valhalla. Did well not to make a horse galloping through space look ridiculous.

I saw an interview in which Eggers implied that he had to wrestle with the studio to keep his vision intact (balanced with accepting massive budget), which might explain why some have found it a bit less Eggsy.

surreal

I've been thinking about this movie since I saw it - I did enjoy it even though it didn't feel like it at the time.  The first act was hard going as the dialogue felt really stilted.  It wasn't until after he left the clan he'd been raiding with and started his own quest that it picked up.  Thought it looked great and sounded terrific - this is the first Eggers film I've seen but will probably track down The Witch and The Lighthouse now.  Good casting, Skarsgard was imposing as always - he's never going to be the best actor but in the right roles he does work well.  Bjork was under-used.  Taylor-Joy is really finding her niche in some odd roles, always very watchable.  Kidman was believably unhinged.  Very Shakespearean overall as you'd expect with the Hamlet connections.

Unfortunately I had my first bad cinema experience in ages as the people behind me... well I think one person had wanted to see the movie but their mate (who seemed to be drunk at 11am on a Saturday) really didn't get it.  He first arrived late after the movie had started and tried to find his mate in the pitch black but instead blundered along my row and ended up climbing over the seat right next to me.  Then being up and down during the movie and then the inevitable chair kicking.  Was like having a gigantic toddler behind me.   

Marv Orange

My friend described it as viking lion King

C_Larence

That makes sense considering Lion King is Hamlet with lions.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


Harvey Milk

I'm really glad that Hollywood's take from the failure of Morbius is that "nobody likes vampire movies" and so Eggers doesn't get to remake Nosferatu. I love Eggers, but why the fuck did he (and Karyn Kusama, for that matter) think that Dracula needed yet another fucking adaptation? Beyond casting Willem Dafoe as the Count, which would be amazing, what's the point? Eggers is obviously capable of so much more than that. Let's just leave the Count Orlok version of the story at Murnau and Herzog and be done with it.

Harvey Milk

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001520/

Quote
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), directed by André Øvredal

Based on a single chapter, the Captain's Log, from Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula, the story is set aboard the Russian schooner Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo - twenty-four unmarked wooden crates - from Carpathia to London. The film will detail the strange events that befell the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a terrifying presence on board the ship. When it finally arrived near Whitby Harbour, it was a derelict. There was no trace of the crew.

Jeez, I didn't realise there was another one coming up. How many iterations of the same characters could we possibly need?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Harvey Milk on April 21, 2022, 12:16:42 PM
I'm really glad that Hollywood's take from the failure of Morbius is that "nobody likes vampire movies" and so Eggers doesn't get to remake Nosferatu. I love Eggers, but why the fuck did he (and Karyn Kusama, for that matter) think that Dracula needed yet another fucking adaptation? Beyond casting Willem Dafoe as the Count, which would be amazing, what's the point? Eggers is obviously capable of so much more than that. Let's just leave the Count Orlok version of the story at Murnau and Herzog and be done with it.

Deciding that vampire movies are (un)dead, rather than Morbius just being a load of plops is silly. That said, casting Dafoe as Count Orlok seems especially redundant, since he's already played the role, sort of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Vampire

Harvey Milk

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on April 21, 2022, 12:39:07 PMDeciding that vampire movies are (un)dead, rather than Morbius just being a load of plops is silly. That said, casting Dafoe as Count Orlok seems especially redundant, since he's already played the role, sort of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Vampire

I didn't know about that film. As you say, it makes the Eggers remake all the more pointless. I know it's a film he's wanted to remake since The Witch and is something of a passion project for him, but someone ought to talk him out of it once and for all.

I've just discovered that Chloé Zhao has got her own 'sci-fi western' take on Dracula planned for release in the next few years. If Kusama's and Eggers' versions had gone ahead - Øvredal's still seems to be in post-production for the moment - that would have been four different adaptations of the story being released in quick succession (not forgetting the BBC series pre-lockdown). Filmmakers are not going to change the major studios' insistence on habitually rehashing, rebooting and remaking the same old stories if they insist on going along with it, even if they genuinely feel that a new adaptation is important and they're not just doing it to make money for more 'worthy' projects.

checkoutgirl

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on April 21, 2022, 12:39:07 PMDeciding that vampire movies are (un)dead, rather than Morbius just being a load of plops is silly

It's like complaining about Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes or little Jimmy Bond.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: Harvey Milk on April 21, 2022, 12:32:14 PMhttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001520/

Jeez, I didn't realise there was another one coming up. How many iterations of the same characters could we possibly need?

That does sound like it could make a pretty good movie, to be fair.

Twit 2


surreal

Quote from: QDRPHNC on April 21, 2022, 02:36:21 PMThat does sound like it could make a pretty good movie, to be fair.

Yeah, done right the Demeter story could be like the original Alien.  Done wrong it's all jump scares and needless gore

Twit 2

This was a step down from The Lighthouse. Feels like:

The Witch - 8.5/10
The Lighthouse - 10/10
The Northman - 7.5/10

The best bits were the weirder interludes, the dream/fantasy/myth sequences. In other words, the most Eggersy bits. But they were interspersed with what's basically a straightforward Viking revenge story. Whilst I found the Viking stuff had the expected verisimilitude, it was also just a bit unengaging and monotonous. The 2nd half of the film better than the first, though, especially when the revenge/fate plot arc got subverted/deviated from.

Good:

All the technical elements, obviously; most of the acting, especially Skarsgård; the Bjork cameo; the crushing violence.

Bit Disappointing:

The script/dialogue, Dafoe. Accents were all over the shop and distracting.

Really liked the ending shot. He knows how to end films.

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on April 16, 2022, 07:22:22 PMCan anyone confirm this happens at the end of this one? I loved the crazy distorted laughing at the end of The Lighthouse, and I'm hoping it becomes a running theme in his films, like Kubrick and the malevolent grin thing.

Not at the end, but mad laughing does feature.

Glebe

Saw this the other night. My expectations were heightened by some of the 5-star reviews so I was a little disappointed by the slight story... still, it's often visually stunning, good mix of visceral brutality and surreal, witchy dreaminess.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Harvey Milk on April 21, 2022, 01:00:54 PMI didn't know about that film.
I've not seen it in 20-odd years, but it's pretty good, as I recall. Dafoe makes for an excellent vampire, as you might well expect.