Film Words

  Everything about The Northman is supersized: the muscles, the action, the budget, and for filmmaker Robert Eggers, the stakes. The Norse epic represents a significant step up onto the worlds stage for a director previously responsible for niche little indie genre flicks, decent hits in and of themselves, but free of the expectations a near $100 million budget will bring. The last ten years have seen many indie breakouts like Eggers suddenly catapulted to box office juggernaut status off the back of just one or two films (Colin Trevorrow, Taika Waititi, Etc) and almost all have lost their creative soul in the process, delivering branded content (TM) studio noted to unintelligible blandness. The supersized risk of The Northman lies in how much it feels like an Eggers film, only bigger. An Eggers film, for those uninitiated, means a semi-mythic period piece dripping with exhaustively researched historical detail, down to the tiniest, grimiest piece of fastidious production desig...

 “Oh, you think darkness is your ally” taunts Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, the last live action solo cinematic outing for Batman, a character we’re so addicted to that we’ve been micro dosing him, in the form of Ben Affleck amongst others, consistently since Christopher Nolan wrapped up his genre altering trilogy of Bat-flicks almost a decade ago, “but you merely adopted the dark”. The quip certainly cuts to the heart of the films Batman has been starring in for the last thirty plus years, starting with Tim Burtons landmark in 1989. That film dimmed the lights and deepened the shadows on a character that had started on screen life as a colourful and poppy children’s hero, most famously embodied by Adam West and his onomatopoeia punching effects. Burton slathered the franchise in gothic, this-ain’t-for-kids attitude and the world took that approach and ran with it.   Batman media has only been getting darker since ’89, as well as grittier and more real (whatever people thin...

 We're in the doldrums folks, time to take a quick look at the kind of studio crap getting released between Christmas and the Oscars this year.    Moonfall Does what it says on the tin. Roland Emmerich has been floundering for some time now as the world grew out of his style of sub-Spielberg disaster porn, but he finds a streak of high camp here that must have caught me in a good mood because I was loving it. The film doesn’t try to hide or excuse its ludicrous premise, instead leaning in to the child’s brain science and conspiracy nonsense with a confidence that charms and delights; it doesn’t want to be taken seriously and I was more than happy to play along. The main cast share that sense of fun, doing sincere evocations of the kind of b-movie performances common in 1950’s films with a fraction of the budget on display here, and never giving in to overly winky parody despite clearly knowing the kind of project they’re in. Patrick Wilson is a standout as a square jawe...

 Gary Valentine is a hustler, a dangerous mix of both teenage and adult confidence, two slightly different qualities that Gary utilises to tear his way through Los Angeles’ San Fernando valley on a one man small business crusade. In a time (the tumultuous mid 1970’s) before home videogame systems or personal computers, Gary channels his boredom into an acting career, a waterbed business, an arcade palace, a romantic pursuit of a woman at least 10 years his senior. The valley he’s tearing through is of course the home of one Paul Thomas Anderson, who’s new film Licorice Pizza stars Cooper Hoffman as the young force of nature.  He is in many ways a classic Anderson protagonist, a relentless con-man, avatar of American capitalism, although at his age he’s not menacing as much as just a menace. Of all Gary’s escapades, it’s that strange romantic pursuit that forms the backbone of this particularly shaggy movie, more a series of memories than anything else. Gary meets and immedi...

 The thing I keep coming back to is that I can’t believe this exists. I have a hard time judging anything Jackson does here because it almost doesn’t matter; It’s The Beatles for crying out loud, The Beatles. What a treasure trove; Perhaps the most intimate and thorough document of the creative process of truly extraordinary artists ever captured. It’s hard to think of a way this footage could be presented that isn’t compelling; then again, Michael Lindsey-Hogg’s infamous whiff of a film somehow proves otherwise.   Mostly the credit lies in what Jackson doesn’t do; no talking heads, very little context outside of the first 10 minutes, leaving in as much raw footage as possible to complicate interpersonal relationships and deepen the personalities of the band. I rolled my eyes when it was announced that the film would be elongated to almost eight hours and presented in three parts, classic Jackson bloat, but it turns out the length is the films greatest strength. Sitting thro...

 Del Toro’s latest is dripping with the kind of prestige that comes when a great filmmaker has just bagged some hefty Oscar gold. Decadent décor and lush cinematography are draped around a cast of acting heavyweights all wearing their serious faces, backed by the kind of (mid)budget that is rare to see for a played-straight drama nowadays. The whole thing feels like a rich chocolate gateau, including the feeling afterwards that there might have been a bit too much of it. The aforementioned prestige stops this from being as lean as it needs to be, as the 1947 version was for sure, with a backstory/framing device for Bradley Coopers protagonist that doesn’t add much of interest, and extra bits of bloat hear and there that drag the pacing to a crawl at times, but there’s a compelling enough idea serving as the narrative backbone that kept me engaged throughout. As Coopers character climes up the rungs of society, from the mud caked carnival with one bath for all to share, to the bou...