nyanbatcat

So a lot of reviews either hate the ending or claim that the ending is the best part. That this movie is smart and philosophical and granted, it does give you something to think about. But the whole thing still fails as a movie.

The first third is a very good, interesting setup for an apocalypse-mystery-thriller. It moves foward at a good pace while taking its time. It keeps introducing elements and keeps you guessing. In the (early) middle it should be clear what is going on. Maybe not down to the detail, but still. At this point the only guessing I was doing was "it cant be that, right? Because there is still a lot of movie left."

The movie tries to keep your interests, but this magician only has two tricks: ominous music and weird stuff happening. Some of that weird stuff wont even make sense at the end. Some of that stuff is just stupid and in the best case seems very unlikely (even if you accept the scenario as a whole) and in the worst case it is just plain wrong or straight up nonsense.

These two tricks become so tiring because you still have a runtime of about 90-60mins left (depending on when you catch onto it).

There are a couple of nice character moments and together with the interesting first third and perhaps trimming about 20-30mins, this could have actually been a really good movie. But we have to keep this stupid idea of mystery alive. We have to get fed lazily written exposition scenes. It also feels artificial, because basically aaaalll the information could have been given in the beginning. One of the characters had a good hunch the entire time, but didnt say because...it was too much soeculation? Even though they all speculated together about other scenarios? The before mentioned repetitive nature of scenes just add of this feeling that this movie is forcefully pulled to 2h20min.

So I think that the last scene is nice and ties a good character-theme and arc together. The ending as a whole though, is terrible, just like most of the rest. Please dont think that you have to be a philosophical brainiac to get it. Its thought provoking, but not hard to understand. It just doesnt work. This is a 8/10 movie that has 30-40% of a 3/10 movie spliced into it. And that kind of spoils the whole thing.

This is as much of a documentary as his diet was real.

This "documentary" mainly interviews "the liver king". If i had to guess, I would say that around 75% of screen time is the liver king, 15% his wife and children, 7% employees and 3% some internet personas . No Scientist or dietary expert. No Professional Expertise of any kind. No uninvolved third party. Nothing. The whole thing gets presented as being nothing more than a socialmedia scandal. As if he isnt a snakeoil salesman that is profiting off the hopes of desperate people (hundreds of million $). As if, after all, he is just a flawed person like we all are, that his message is more important. This isnt hyperbole, these things literally are said and none of these things gets contested.

This is basically just a platform for him to make another sales pitch. An updated persona of his tainted image. Now that he has been exposed (3 years ago) he still wants people to literally buy his lies. Just that now he apparently wants to both accept that he is abusing steroids like a maniac (11,000$\month) but its still somehow thanks to his diet. A carnivorous diet that he wants to sell to people in the form of food supplements. How this logic has huge gaps and is completely unbacked by science should be apparent. But neither aspect gets mentioned.

This is propaganda with just the tiniest amount of criticism to be able to say brians issues were adressed.

The 5minute article ive read about this guy before watching this, was more informative and more balanced. What a huge waste!

If you know Eggers work, you know how he visually presents movies. I actually think this is one of his best looking movies, but this is the only that stands out positively. It also kind of works against it:

The northman presents itself like a lost, epic viking Saga. One that encapsulates everything we commonly associate with their culture now. A Saga that gets supernatural every now and then, but is mostly based in our world. Poetic speeches phrased in riddles, extreme personalities (mostly needlessly cruel/violent), weird rituals, talk of fates and prophecies, spiritual characters that seem to know more than the characters or the viewers and so on.

So far this sounds great, but there are also shortcomings and the good things actually make them worse. The Plot is a very basic hero revenge story, which makes it easy to compare to many other movies. Such as King Arthur or Boy Kills world. They both also feel like Epic Sagas, are both about fate, they start with a young protagonist that falls, has to hide, grows up secluded. But they feel more comfortable with what they are, they feel more like they succeeded at their intents (Like them or not). Why is that?

First of all they dont take place in our world, so many things dont stick out the way they do here. They also dont try to be this serious, gritty and poetic. They are more honest about what they are: a spectacle.

The northman breaks apart because of this Split between how it presents itself and how basic the plot is, how overblown and theatrical some characters act, how the dialects are all over the place, how cliche some aspects are. It seems like it wants to be taken really seriously when it feels more like it was written by a edgy 16-year old and then a bunch of talented people tried to make it look deep.