RATINGS
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
WORST MOVIE EVER
The Northman Review: Men are trash
BEST MOVIE EVER
1
BY ALEX DE VORE a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
Despite jumping on the social medias last week to bemoan my lack of interest in yet another entry in the seemingly never-ending onslaught of viking-based entertainment of late, I found myself at Violet Crown alongside the other beardos to see The Northman from The VVitch director Robert Eggers. Eggers sure makes pretty movies, and if you don’t believe that, please see The Lighthouse immediately, for it is a masterpiece. Eggers’ works are generally dense-adjacent, symbolist films wherein folks are undone by obsession and wherein toxic masculinity turns men into something inhuman while the people around them—or they themselves—suffer horrible fates. He also likes taking his sweet damn time and never shies away from ugly violence. These aren’t new concepts by any means, though the juxtaposition of gorgeous cinematography and even more gorgeous backdrops against spilled blood and the dark motivations of man don’t hurt the timeless messaging. In The Northman, Alexander Skarsgård plays a viking—a berserker, no less (Google it)—who sets out with vengeance on his mind but then, like, also finds a little bit of love along the way. It’s a little bit Hamlet (Skarsgård’s dude’s name is even Amleth), a little bit Lez Miz-meets-Oedipus, a little bit Count of Monte Cristo and a whole lot of hard to watch. Seems Amleth’s kingly dad (Ethan Hawke) got got by his brother (Claes Bang), who also kidnapped the queen Gudrún (Nicole
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
9
+ EVERY PERFORMANCE; CHAOS; MARTIAL ARTS
- COULD ALIENATE SOME
For those who’ve yet to fall under Michelle Yeoh’s spell (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, anyone?! Crazy Rich Asians?!), make it your business to head into theaters for Everything Everywhere All at Once, a brilliant sendup of the evermore commonplace concept of infinite realities—you know; the multiverse. Brought to us by the inimitably strange directing team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka Daniels (the auteurs behind the bold and beautifully bizarre Swiss Army Man), it’s the type of film that should sate the heady science nerds, the self-assigned cultural elite and those who just plain want to see a weird movie rolled up into a sci-fi/rom-com/ kung fu/family story. Here we follow Evelyn (Yeoh) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan of Goonies and Temple of Doom fame), a long-married couple who live above the middling laundromat they run together. As the Wangs face an IRS audit from a seemingly heartless agent (Jamie Lee Curtis, who gets gloriously weird), Waymond wants a divorce, and their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) isn’t helping so much as she seems hellbent on using her girlfriend to freak out her folks. It’s a bit of a humdrum life until an alternate-universe Waymond appears, kung fu fanny pack in hand, to inform Evelyn she’s the last hope in facing a threat to the infinitely layered universes that make up reality. 36
MOVIES
7 + BEAUTIFULLY
SHOT; NOT BORING - WE DONE WITH VIKINGS YET?
Kidman), leading to decades of festering resentment turned to seriously creative ideas for face-stabbing. When Amleth does indeed catch up to his dear old uncle with a little help from a Norn (a Norse fate-making witch kind of deity) played by Björk, it’s off to Iceland for clobberin’ time; a simple plan right up until he develops the hots for an enslaved Russian named Olga (the ever-impressive Anya Taylor-Joy who is in every movie ever made) and a little bit of a hallucination issue. Even so, Amleth believes himself fated to succeed, and no amount of beatings, bloodsport, cave monsters or shitty family mechanics are going to stop him. Skarsgård feels borderline silly with his massive, hulking muscles and hunched gait and broad shoulders glistening in the overcast Icelandic wild. Taylor-Joy grounds his character in better motivations than hate, though, and she’s all about breaking men’s minds. Bang makes an imposing enough villain, though he’s really more of a presence or cipher for evil, and we don’t learn what drives him until way later. It isn’t self-generated. Kidman (who played Skarsgård’s wife in HBO’s
A dark presence called Jobu Tupaki is killing Wangs and anyone else they encounter across timelines. Using tech to take over the consciousnesses of their multiverse counterparts, Waymond and Evelyn can instantly learn the skills of their other life versions, and that’s precisely how a middle-aged laundromat owner becomes a master of martial arts, a flawless singer, a talented movie star and, ultimately, learns acceptance. Yeoh is absolutely riveting as the dissatisfied mother, and whereas her kung fu skills have always been apparent, here she shows off her acting chops. It’s a pleasant surprise to learn she’s a secret goofball, and her journey feels reminiscent of Jennifer Lawrence’s in Aranofsky’s Mother!, only more focused and relatable. In the quieter moments, even the very funny ones, Yeoh’s range feels unmatched. Quan, meanwhile, steals the show often, and his presence as the all-important jester archetype softens Yeoh’s character, which is not to say he isn’t a badass in his own right. Hsu might be the true breakout, though, pulling double duty as the chaotic daughter and the even more chaotic villain. Of course, nothing is simple in Daniels’ vision—and three cheers to Jamie Lee for nailing emotional scenes with literal hot dog fingers. The humor cuts the tension while helping to make sense of the converging timelines, though it might help to have read comic books one’s whole life. Even still, one needn’t have a physics degree to get into why Everything Everywhere All at Once is so fun. It begs for repeated viewings, not least of which
APRIL APRIL 27-MAY 27-MAY 3, 3, 2022 2022 •• SFREPORTER.COM SFREPORTER.COM
Big Little Lies but here plays his mother because fuck Hollywood) turns in one of the better performances of her career, however, which kind of deflates the moments she isn’t onscreen, at least in the later bits wherein she emerges as a more powerful creature than seemed possible. Moviegoers will likely take The Northman’s ending any number of ways, but hopefully realize how even getting the things over which we’ve obsessed doesn’t always mean it feels good—or is good for those around us. Someplace in there, find reasons to dislike white supremacy even more than you already should, and also some satisfying homage to other shocking films (no spoilers, though). The payoff, however, does not particularly satisfy, though that’s kind of the point.
for Yeoh’s career-defining performance. People will talk about this one for years to come, and it’s likely to inspire a whole new generation of filmmakers. Rarely does something so weird make its way into the mainstream, but thank goodness it did. (ADV) Center for Contemporary Arts, Violet Crown, R, 139 min.
WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR
5
+ FREAKY SET-UP - BECOMES MONOTONOUS
You know at least one person who’s going to watch We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and then describe it as a brilliant commentary on people who live online. “It’s a little rough around the edges,” they’ll say, “but brilliant nonetheless.” Then there’s everyone else who’ll be left perplexed by director Jane Schoenbrun’s first full-length narrative film. Slow and methodical horror is an incredibly difficult genre to pull off successfully, but it’s still clear we’ve got a divisive film on our hands. Casey (Anna Cobb, in an excellent debut performance) would like nothing more than to live inside a horror movie. In the film’s 10-minute single-shot opening, she stares into her webcam and declares, “I want to go to the World’s Fair,” over and over again. The fictional online roleplaying world where people live in a horror-movie like environment has a tendency to turn users into something strange—people who have an inability to feel pain, who develop strange
THE NORTHMAN Directed by Eggers With Skarsgård, Kidman, Bang and Taylor-Joy Violet Crown, R, 136 min.
scabs or even get pulled inside their computers. Do you know about the online Creepypasta stuff? That would be a good primer to help viewers understand. It’s meant to be fun, but as Casey is initiated into the game, an older man named JLB (Michael J. Rogers) takes a special interest in her well-being, and her dark thoughts begin revealing themselves. World’s Fair’s atmosphere is tense and creepy, its silence completely mesmerizing. It’s so uncomfortably isolating you can’t help but feel sad for Casey’s life at its outset as it’s like an isolation that reflects a quiet inner terror inspired by the conditions of the world around her. Cobb’s superb performance adds to the film’s intriguing set-up, yet its commentary isn’t as clear as it ought to be. After so long in this relatively short film, one wishes we could just get on with it. Despite a tense start, we aren’t granted any kind of satisfying payoff. Listen, we know young people are more reliant on the internet in a way that seems to baffle older generations, and they use it to build connections lacking from their personal lives. Actually, that might be a more universal thing. Even so, a more steadily building energy, even a slight one, would have worked wonders. Schoenbrun certainly knows how to kick off a story, but there are near-constant “this is my first feature,” vibes. The more studied horror geeks might find World’s Fair riveting, and if you’re one of them it’s worth a shot. As a whole, however, it flounders, even if there’s no denying how absolutely creepy the whole thing gets. (Riley Gardner) Center for Contemporary Arts, NR, 86 min.
