reviewsfortherestofus

At one end of the critical spectrum I bet we have the anime faithful who feel betrayed in whatever capacity, and at the other I'll wager we have friends and families of the live action adaptation. I'm putting my money on Yumeko, since Ms. Martineau is clearly having a field day playing an unhinged gambler with a hidden feudal Japanese clan agenda. The rest of the cast is acting like they have an actual stake in this game, and the overall vibe is I daresay, delightfully mischievous, with a sprinkle of Sex Education (minus the good vibes). Plus, how can you go wrong with the message that the world is controlled by soulless cheats who run it like a roulette table with a hidden switch. Of course our true overlords are the tech idiot savants who are ruining the planet, but their avatars on this remake of Kakegurui will do.

Rating: Ten stars to the support crew: sound, photography, costumes, music, make-up, special effects etc. Minus 6 stars to the people in charge: producers, writers and directors who made a real Amlet of this.

Review: Dear Rest of Us Grown-Ups, once I realized, a few hours into this week-long saga (it felt like a week), that it was secretly intended as a spoof of the Vikings show, I started enjoying it.

I'm singling out Alex Skarsgard for his confusing wolf and fox impersonations, which sounded a bit like my neighbor on tax day. The former Scandinavian vampire and blonde lord of the jungle now puts his impressive six-pack in the service of a malodorous, genocidal and cognitively challenged prince who seeks revenge on his evil uncle, but feels he needs to practice on a great many defenseless Russian peasants. He rages, chops, howls, digs through a lot of thatch, battles mummies on old-time LSD, howls some more, chops some more. The joke gets old, but it's still funny.

Then there's Nicole Kidman, who loses her witchy marbles and goes deviously incestuous on her vengeful son in a scene whose unfortunate lighting reveals that she has undergone more cosmetic surgery than the entire Kardashian clan.

Let's not forget Anya Taylor-Joy who, we learn, has the power to command the Wind and the Earth, and can fling menstrual blood by the bucket, but can't escape a handful of drunk Icelandic slavers. This echoes the performance of Bjork, who plays a Russian fortune teller who apprises young Omelet of his not-so-cryptic fate with remarkable accuracy, while failing to predict that he would come to raze her village and put her eyes out.

There were also Abbott and Costello-worthy shamanic scenes, Freya riding her white-maned horse after visiting her Valhalla dentist, the worst magic mushroom trip ever, and a battle to the death that comes none too soon and frees us at last from the Northman's antics.

The cherry on the pickled herring was the smorgasbord of accents that were meant to convey, through tortured English, the variety of tribes and settings. In closing, the Northman is mercifully freed from his English lines, and gets to imprecate in full-on old Scand with subtitles. Alas what he gets to say is about as memorable as my latest grocery list.

I don't like Mel Gibson much, but at least when he did Apocalypto, he had the balls to do it in some recreated version of ancient Meso-American.

Maybe I'll watch The Northman again for the laughs when I'm less irritated. Or maybe not.

In this nine-hundredth installment of the same old story there's a man in a heavy cape trying very hard to keep it from flapping around when he's running and fighting. My advice: lose the cape.

There's also a young lady with very long nails and severe anorexia who weighs eighty-three pounds with her designer boots on and somehow manages to take down men three times her size - but can't shoot her deadbeat dad in a barrel. My advice: eat properly and take your vitamins.

If that weren't enough, we are treated to a scarred mobster who gives the man in the cape a Spanish lesson.

If this had been billed as an absurdist comedy, I think I would have enjoyed it more. Instead, this travesty of a movie takes itself so seriously it pops a temple vein or two. I was literally fuming at the 120-minute mark, and there was almost another hour to go.

I have a tax proposal for Hollywood: every time a new Batman or Spiderman movie is made, half the proceeds should go towards funding indie movies with actual scripts.