Movie review by Greg Carlson

Talia Osteen’s high-concept “Sex Appeal” is more charming than it has any right to be. Osteen’s feature directorial debut, which can be seen in the United States on Hulu, takes turns embracing formulaic conventions and subverting them. Fortunately, some chemistry between appealing lead Mika Abdalla (as brainiac Avery Hansen-White) and Jake Short (as longtime torch-bearer Larson) offsets the predictability of both the biggest story beats and the thematic argument that love is the key to sexual fulfillment – the latter notion somewhat at odds with the unapologetic sex-positivity threaded throughout Tate Hanyok’s screenplay.

Suspension of disbelief is an absolute covenant in the teen sex comedy, and Hanyok and Osteen attempt some Olympic-level gymnastics to set up the film’s implausible plot engine: the inexperienced Avery, en route to a repeat appearance at the “nerd prom” that is prestigious pre-college competition STEMcon, will kill two birds with one stone. To prepare for the presumed ecstasy promised by her own IRL rendezvous with long-distance beau Casper (Mason Versaw), Avery gets to work designing an app that will “collect data and prescribe steps for a successful sexual experience.”

The catch: Avery’s intelligence-gathering leads her to enlist childhood pal Larson as her personal test subject/practice partner, and she is oblivious to the inevitability that his romantic feelings are at odds with her quest for carnal mastery. The agreement between Avery and Larson is redolent of “No Strings Attached” and “Friends With Benefits,” the 2011 romantic comedies that covered similar turf, but the “I’m with the wrong person” triangulations and complications come from the playbook of classic, paradigmatic screwballs like “It Happened One Night” and “The More the Merrier.”

The most curious dimension of “Sex Appeal” is the disconnect between the raw, R-rated vocabulary and the chaste, PG visuals that accompany all sex-related activity. One of the film’s funniest scenes is the rapid-fire checklist of “partner-pleasure approaches” offered by Ben Wang’s deadpan Franklin, which include digital techniques like the rock-and-roll, the surf’s up, the double-action revolver, the Spock, the reverse Spock, and the Devil’s Advocate. Avery’s imagination conjures up vividly-hued metaphors whenever she and Larson take another step: a Busby Berkeley-esque synchronized swim, a mission control rocket launch, a doo-wop musical number, and a waterlogged subterranean tunnel. The latter calls to mind the most notorious scene from the far raunchier and less enlightened 1990 cult film “Getting Lucky.”

Osteen draws engaging performances from her entire cast. Abdalla deserves extra points for working so hard to make the audience believe that someone of Avery’s intelligence wouldn’t have already managed to discover the basics and fundamentals of self-pleasure, if not partnered interactions. But we are in that cinematic fantasyland where such things are not only possible but of critical narrative importance. “Sex Appeal” may lack the kind of nuance that powered “Booksmart,” but the film deserves credit for sticking the landing. Alongside the broad comic strokes – which include the awkwardly well-meaning trio of Avery’s lesbian moms and Paris Jackson’s role as a kind of intimacy guru – Osteen’s female-oriented perspective respects the characters and champions and affirms wellness.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The newest David Cronenberg feature, “Crimes of the Future,” shares its name with the director’s own 1970 film, but the 2022 edition stands as a self-contained work and is not a sequel or a remake. The career-long preoccupations of the filmmaker, however, remain unmistakable. Cronenberg, whose movies are sometimes lumped in with lesser horror exercises, braids his creepy visions of the limits of the human body with a strong interest in the systems all around us – including politics and the consequences of bad decisions made sometimes by people with a lot of power and sometimes by people with virtually no power.

Viggo Mortensen plays the appropriately-named Saul Tenser, a curious performance artist whose ability to grow novel organs inside his body is matched by his capacity for what would have surely been excruciating pain in an earlier era. Despite the audience learning that humans have, in general, lost the ability to feel physical discomfort, Saul still writhes and emotes and grimaces and works very, very intimately with his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), a former trauma surgeon who now applies her special skills to the removal of Saul’s innards. People pay to observe this spectacle, which is carried out by an insectoid apparatus that makes incisions via a biomechanical controller.

Longtime Cronenberg collaborator Carol Spier, as ever, offers up this arresting gallery of concoctions with the delights that only practical effects can provide (love that feeding chair and sleeping pod). Spier’s invention of exoskeletal hybrids places her in rare company alongside the likes of H. R. Giger, but her work stands on its own as some of the most elegant and exquisite nightmare fuel ever committed to cinema. In total, “Crimes of the Future” routinely transcends its budgetary limitations to arrive at a painterly series of compositions reminiscent of the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and Goya.

While decidedly not for all tastes, Cronenberg’s unique oeuvre is as deliberately erotic as it is disturbing. The relationship between Saul and Caprice is the irregular heartbeat of “Crimes of the Future,” and Mortensen and Seydoux give off showers of sparks in their onscreen partnership. We can only speculate as to whether the movie would have worked as well with rumored early-choices Ralph Fiennes or Nicolas Cage as Saul and Natalie Portman as Caprice, but I for one am glad that Mortensen reported for Cronenberg duty once again. “Crimes of the Future” doesn’t offer the same opportunities of mid-2000s highlights like “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises,” but Mortensen balances the ridiculous and the sublime like few others.

Additionally, Kristen Stewart – who playfully suggested she had no clue what the movie was about the entire time she worked on it – is also delightfully comic as National Organ Registry record keeper and Saul stan Timlin. Manohla Dargis, who attended the Cannes premiere, noted that “It’s certainly the only movie [at the festival] that solicits both your laughter and disgust, alternately entertaining you with macabre jokes and testing your limits with grotesque imagery.”

It is because of, and not despite, the viscera that “Crimes of the Future” succeeds as a romance. “Surgery is the new sex” may be nearly as wild a concept as the symphorophilia practiced by the inhabitants of Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s “Crash,” but the intimacies of Saul and Caprice, complemented by Howard Shore’s terrific score, are the most successful components of “Crimes of the Future.” Through the central relationship, Cronenberg freely explores the personal and the public, speculating on life, love, and the future in his inimitable way.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In Chloe Okuno’s feature debut “Watcher,” which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, a frightening serial killer called the Spider haunts and stalks the neighborhoods of Bucharest. Maika Monroe’s aspiring actress Julia has unwittingly chosen this inopportune moment to relocate to Romania with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman), who has taken a new job to advance his career. While paying direct homage to “Rear Window” and several other sources, Okuno builds an effective thriller that draws the viewer into Julia’s increasingly hazardous disequilibrium.

Okuno, working from a screenplay by Zack Ford, makes excellent use of text and subtext to explore a range of ideas that unmistakably double as commentary on the commonplace experiences of women everywhere. For most, threats from diabolical murderers exist only in the realms of fiction, but the exhausting precautions women must take to safely navigate spaces private and public are underlined by Okuno’s choices. “Watcher” operates from within the genre framework of horror, and the casting of Monroe – most closely identified with her central performance in “It Follows” – makes an immediate thematic connection.

Busy with his gig and eager to impress his superiors, Francis immerses himself in work. An increasingly frustrated Julia spends long stretches of time alone. Adding to her feelings of isolation is the language barrier. Half-Romanian Francis speaks fluently and often communicates to others without bothering to fully translate for Julia, who neither speaks Romanian nor understands what is being said. Okuno uses this basic discourtesy as one of the first indicators that Julia cannot and should not depend on Francis. She also withholds subtitles to align non-speakers with Julia’s frustration.

Principal photography in Romania during the pandemic presented challenges to cast and crew. Okuno said in an interview for the virtual Sundance presentation that all-in, she spent six years getting “Watcher” made, so one can imagine that her commitment to the project was ironclad. And the film’s measured pace and carefully calibrated tone exhibit Okuno’s determination; the filmmaker maintains close contact with Julia’s point of view throughout the film. Perhaps Okuno’s most skillful feat as a storyteller is her ability to manipulate the viewer. For a time, we simultaneously question Julia’s sanity and empathize with her.

Some of Okuno’s cinematic inspirations are more obvious than others. The configuration of Julia’s new apartment, with a set of massive windows that look out directly into another building, establish a Hitchcockian baseline for the protagonist’s concerns. In one scene, Julia attends a screening of “Charade,” Stanley Donen’s own homage to the Master of Suspense. Others have noted allusions to titles as varied as “Halloween” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” and I would add “Repulsion” to the list. “Watcher” is more modest than these movies, but the comparisons indicate that we should do well to keep track of Okuno’s career.

It’s no spoiler to say that “Watcher” arrives at an intense climax that should startle even seasoned hounds. Okuno’s film is arguably grounded in a more realistic world than the one imagined by Alex Garland in “Men,” but a double-feature would reveal several intriguing ways in which the two movies are in concert regarding the extra work that women are called upon to do. When I reviewed “Men,” I quoted Taylor Antrim, who wrote about “the ubiquity of masculine power, about how male violence and thuggery are everywhere — and how ancient they are.” Antrim’s statement could just as easily be applied to “Watcher.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Novelist/screenwriter/director Alex Garland has earned a sizable and devoted following over the years. His previous two feature directorial efforts, “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” shimmered with retro-futurist cool and pop philosophical preoccupations enhanced by the presence of appealing performers, dazzling production design, and the sharp cinematography of Rob Hardy. “Men,” Garland’s latest, will draw the filmmaker’s faithful, but the modest environs, esoteric posture, and open text most likely won’t translate to massive financial success.

“Men” alludes to several hallmarks of folk horror, including themes of ominous spirituality and religion, an isolated protagonist, a rural/pastoral setting, and the creeping sense of bleak and unrelenting nihilism pervading the film’s tone. The plight of Jessie Buckley’s Harper Marlowe, the widow whose desire to heal from the apparent suicide of her husband leads her to book an old house in a small village, becomes an exercise in potentially unreliable narration. So bizarre and eldritch are the increasingly impossible aggressions that one begins to wonder how much could be taking place in the fog of our heroine’s post-trauma imagination.

Garland’s central gimmick is the casting of Rory Kinnear as all of the villagers with whom Harper interacts upon arrival in Coston. Caretaker Geoffrey, whose oversized teeth and bad haircut imply a kind of clownish and narrow country mouse, leads the pack of masculine menace. Kinnear will also inhabit a vicar, a boy, a police officer, a pub proprietor, and a nude stalker, among others. Garland certainly isn’t shy about leaving room for a reading in which the omnipresence of Kinnear fires a warning shot that indeed all men are of no use, no help, no support, and certainly no comfort to Harper.

Kinnear’s multiplicity also shatters any hope of solace or solitude for Harper. Garland’s awareness that women simply can’t enjoy the same privileges as men – namely, the general lack of fear when alone in public and even private spaces that men nearly always take for granted – fuels one of the movie’s central themes. As Taylor Antrim succinctly puts it, Garland embeds provocative ideas in “thoughts about the ubiquity of masculine power, about how male violence and thuggery are everywhere — and how ancient they are.” Anthony Lane pushes just as hard, claiming that in the film’s world, “men are defined, and propelled, by the ill will that they bear to the opposite sex …”

All these strange reverberations and reflections among the characters portrayed by Kinnear are mirrored by a fantastic sequence in which Harper explores the woods near the rental property. At the mouth of a long tunnel, she composes a haunting, wordless song built out of the ripples of her own sustained vocal echo. For one fleeting moment, the character’s reason for leaving the city seems to take tentative shape and maybe even flight. It’s my favorite scene in the film. The idyll is over almost as quickly as it begins, pointing toward increasingly nightmarish events that climax with wild, gender-inverting blasphemies of birth and rebirth as mysterious and incongruous as the frequent presence of the pagan Green Man in Christian chapels, churches and cathedrals.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Writer-director Mariama Diallo’s satirical short “Hair Wolf” attracted attention at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, earning a jury award for its funny/scary social commentary. Diallo returned to the festival in 2022 with debut feature “Master,” a promising extension of her interests in the contemporary politics and historical hegemony of insidious, institutionalized white supremacy. “Master” drops the humor of “Hair Wolf” but retains the pointed snark, inventing what ultimately transforms from a familiar genre exercise into an exposé of American racism. Despite a few rather generous critical comparisons to Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” “Master” certainly won’t be collecting an Academy Award for Best Screenplay – let alone a nomination. Even so, the film is worth a look.

Regina Hall draws the viewer to her wary, skeptical Gail Bishop, a tenured faculty member at the fictional Ancaster College. Bishop has recently been installed in the role of “master,” a kind of residential dean-of-students position with little visible upside (it’s also a perfectly-loaded word for the film’s title). Ancaster is sketched by Diallo as an old-money, East Coast, private liberal arts institution with ghostly historical allusions to the Salem witchcraft hysteria of the late 1600s. Bishop’s acclimation to her new quarters, which includes the disturbing discovery of maggot-infested drawers and startling Black Americana in the kitchen, is hampered by the sounds of the servant-quarter bells, which occasionally ring even though Bishop is the only person on the premises.

Bishop’s experiences as a newbie are paralleled by those of first-year enrollee Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee), one of a very small number of Black students to matriculate at Ancaster. Diallo layers the exposition with a duality that emphasizes the feelings of anxiety experienced by both women. One level suggests the kinds of plot points that read as common genre elements (Jasmine’s investigation into the death of the college’s first Black student, who happened to live in the same dorm room, for example) and the other level is a barrage of sharply-staged microaggressions.

Not everything Diallo throws at the wall sticks, however. Odie Henderson’s review expresses frustration at what he perceives as Diallo’s remedial constructions for white audiences. Henderson writes, “Black folks don’t need the classes in Racism 101 ‘Master’ offers; life gives us PhD’s early on.” There may be some validity to that point, but a better critique of the film’s shortcomings would highlight the sizable number of red herrings and loose ends that detract from the more formidable discourse on the ubiquity of racism – visible and invisible, past and present.

Diallo also seems less certain of how she would like to develop Jasmine’s journey, which is ultimately less satisfying and more confounding than the one written for Gail Bishop. The subplot involving colleague Liv Beckman (Amber Gray), a literature professor enduring a contentious tenure review, ends with a stunning revelation. Diallo does some of her best work here, bringing together the storylines of both central characters while simultaneously nodding to the alarmism seeded by right wing bullshitters who, in Trump’s GOP, can’t be bothered to conceal their bigotry in fear-mongering attacks on misunderstood topics like Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Amy Poehler’s nonfiction feature debut as director is a solid and informative account of the inextricably linked personal and professional lives of two visionary entertainers and broadcasting pioneers. The title “Lucy and Desi” doesn’t require the last names Ball and Arnaz for viewers to instantly identify the powerful pair (or to guess why Poehler would be drawn to the story). They are still household names, decades on. Powered by a massive and well-preserved archive of radio, film, and television material showcasing the hard-working couple separately and together, the documentary – which premiered at the virtual Sundance Film Festival in January before landing on Amazon – is worthwhile viewing for show business aficionados.

Poehler sticks to a straightforward chronological structure, but several key themes emerge along the way. With the participation of Lucy and Desi’s daughter Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, who presumably provided access to some (if not all) of the home movie footage and audio recordings, the importance of family is rivaled only by discussions of the indefatigable work ethic and business acumen that, combined with a commitment to risk-taking, saw Lucy and Desi forge the empire that would at one time become the biggest independent television production company and studio in Hollywood. “I Love Lucy” was, in part, conceived as a means to get Desi off the road and an opportunity for the pair to spend more time together.

Poehler also reaches out to a select group of individuals for talking head interviews, speaking not only at length with Arnaz Luckinbill, but collecting observations, insights, and anecdotes from Norman Lear, playwright/professor Eduardo Machado, and the children of close Ball/Arnaz creative collaborators. The director’s deliberate concentration on gender issues in the film and television industry, the glass ceiling, and longstanding stereotypes about women in comedy is highlighted by the presence of Carol Burnett, Bette Midler, Laura LaPlaca (Director of Archives and Research, National Comedy Center), and Journey Gunderson (Executive Director, National Comedy Center).

Gunderson imagines the number of times Ball would have encountered sexism via “mansplaining” and patriarchal entitlement. The star’s thanks for assertiveness and interest in the filmmaking process? A lingering and disproportionate focus on “how hard-nosed she could be.” Poehler, no stranger to the same garbage faced by Ball, corroborates Gunderson’s point that Ball maintained an absolute dedication to ongoing improvement in all facets of her career. Ball herself dispels the myth of natural talent and effortless physical comedy in favor of grueling practice and constant rehearsal.

Toward the end of the film, Arnaz Luckinbill notes that the public prefers to imagine Lucy and Desi as a perpetual supercouple, even though their union ended in divorce in 1960 (Arnaz’s infidelities barely merit a mention). Both remarried; Lucy to Gary Morton and Desi to Edith Mack Hirsch. Arnaz Luckinbill points out, “They were married to those people longer than they were married to each other.” Poehler makes certain to strike a steady and careful balance between Ball and Arnaz in the film, allowing them to share the spotlight in a meaningful way far more satisfying than any loose-with-the-facts biopic fictionalization.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy lays out damning evidence in “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing,” which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and is now available to stream on Netflix. Kennedy’s sobering, infuriating film is peak advocacy storytelling, a focused takedown equally interested in the human cost of corporate greed and the chain of bad decisions that led to a pair of preventable crashes. Air travel has developed into a remarkably safe way to move people from place to place and no company had as much to do with the dawn and subsequent growth of the jet age. The incredible success of the “moonshot” 747 program attested to the loyalty and trust earned by the company.

But in 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 plummeted into the Java Sea just a few minutes after takeoff from Jakarta. All 189 passengers and crew members were killed. And then, in March of 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near the village of Tulu Fara. Another 157 people lost their lives. Both instances involved Boeing 737 MAX airliners. The company at first suggested that pilot error accounted for the tragedies, but unfolding investigations pointed to a serious design flaw in the computer-driven stabilizer program known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

Kennedy interviews aviation experts, air transportation professionals, journalists, pilots, engineers, and former Boeing employees, arriving at the nightmarish conclusion that a culture driven by shareholder value and profit margins aided and abetted both a fatal turning point and an unconscionable cover-up. The movie operates as a gripping cinematic exercise due to the hard work of writer-producers Keven McAlester and Mark Bailey (the latter is married to Kennedy). Cinematographer Aaron Gully is top-notch and editor Don Kleszy cuts everything together with an emphasis on narrative clarity and legibility.

The profits-over-safety flip representing the diametric opposite of the decades-long commitment to Boeing’s engineering and manufacturing process tags several villains. Dennis Muilenburg, the disgraced Boeing CEO who was eventually fired, walked away with an estimated 62 million dollars in his pension compensation package (and this was after forfeiting 14.6 million dollars in stock). Kennedy elects to focus, however, on the words of those we might describe as witnesses for the prosecution: reporter Andy Pasztor of “The Wall Street Journal,” U.S. representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, and heroic pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger are just three of the subjects.

But it is the presence of the people who lost loved ones in the crashes that most humanizes “Downfall.” Garima Sethi, the widow of Lion Air Captain Bhavye Suneja, and Michael Stumo, father of victim Samya Stumo, articulate pain and outrage with specificity and heartbreakingly personal detail. Both speakers communicate with poise and determination, as does Zipporah Kuria, daughter of Joseph Waithaka. Nadia Milleron, Samya Stumo’s mother, is represented in archival footage. A few critics have faulted Kennedy for not taking a more comprehensive approach to the extent of Boeing’s “sweetheart” relationship with the United States government (in 2019, the company was second only to Lockheed Martin as the world’s largest maker of arms). In my estimation, though, “Downfall” accomplishes Kennedy’s principal goal: it shines a bright light into a dark place.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm’s feature debut “Hatching” is a satisfying creature-feature delight. A coming-of-age, body horror nightmare with a sharp sense of social critique and a nose for the adolescent challenges of complicated mother-daughter relationships, Bergholm’s film critiques the contemporary obsession with self-centered personal branding and the pursuit of clicks, likes, and followers. Better yet, Bergholm commits to the old-fashioned practical effects of 1980s classics like “Gremlins,” “Re-Animator,” “The Fly,” and “Society,” channeling their great monsters as well as their satirical commentary.

Preteen Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) and her little brother Matias (Oiva Ollila) mirror their parents (Sophia Heikkilä and Jani Volanen) in both attire and carefully-groomed behavior. The affluent family members live together in a house that resembles the set of a color-coordinated pastel magazine shoot more than it feels like a home. Mother’s desire for perfection extends to her avocation: the production of “Lovely Everyday Life,” a video blog/web series capturing and curating seemingly every activity of the nuclear unit for online consumption. The idyllic facade, instantly recognizable as forced and phony, is shattered when a large crow smashes through a window, raining down havoc along with an expensive chandelier.

That ill omen is the telltale harbinger of change. Tinja, who recoils at her mom’s treatment of the avian intruder, ends up rescuing and hiding an unhatched egg in her bedroom. Soon, the girl’s secret has grown to enormous size. Once the inhabitant of the shell emerges, Bergholm develops an archetypal doppelganger exercise, using Tinja’s impossibly weird correspondent – equally grotesque and pitiable – to work out a psychological examination of womanhood. To say any more would certainly spoil some of the fun, much of which is derived from the brilliant work of animatronic specialist Gustav Hoegen and the makeup designs of past Oscar nominee Conor O’Sullivan.

No kid wants to let down a parent, and Tinja’s personal ordeal is magnified by her participation in competitive gymnastics, an ideal vehicle to embody the liminal state between girl and woman. Screenwriter Ilja Rautsi uses the confusion of puberty to build an increasingly tense psychological cage for Tinja, illustrated by the protagonist’s discovery of self and her danger to others. All the parts of the puzzle fit together without sacrificing a sense of mystery and wonder which occasionally recalls, albeit less operatically and without the labyrinthine extradimensional arcana, “Twin Peaks” and its tragic heroine Laura Palmer. Both stories effectively communicate the Janus-faced demands of keeping up appearances when darker and more disturbing things are hidden just out of sight.

Bergholm commits to lots of daylight and sunshine, another key choice that differentiates “Hatching” from so many horror contemporaries. The daytime scenes can be deeply unsettling, and Bergholm stages a particularly effective sequence at the house being restored by the extramarital lover of Tinja’s mother, a carpenter/handyman played by well-known Finnish actor/musician Reino Nordin and coded with all the masculinity (and a wink) that accompanies the stereotype. A few dissenting voices have argued that the central metaphor of “Hatching” plays out with a heavy-handed obviousness, but for my money, Bergholm’s commitment to – in her own words – “powerful stories about female emotions” – yields handsome dividends.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Robert Eggers’s friend Robert Pattinson tries out “I’m vengeance” as the Batman’s latest cinematic catchphrase. In “The Northman,” Alexander Skarsgård’s Prince Amleth takes it up a few notches, preparing himself in the style of Beatrix Kiddo and Maximus Decimus Meridius for a roaring rampage of bloody, gladiatorial revenge on his nasty uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang, whose character is soon enough “Fjölnir the Brotherless”). Loosely inspired by the medieval Scandinavian legend that gave birth to Shakespeare’s famous tragic Dane, “The Northman” – despite a whopping budget that started at an estimated 65 million and finished closer to 90 million – is not likely to see the same kind of box office receipts enjoyed by Matt Reeves’s blockbuster.

Even so, one marvels that in his short career Eggers has been able to accomplish that rare feat: the delivery of auteurist visions immediately recognizable for meticulous period details and a commitment to uncompromising storytelling craft. “The Northman” also retains the filmmaker’s deep respect for the weird and the uncanny. Both “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” (93 and 109 minutes to the 137 of “The Northman”) are weirder and more uncanny, however, due in no small part to their closer proximity to the horror genre. “The Northman” has a few tricks up its sleeve, but Amleth’s mantra – “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir” – is indeed the essence of the plot.

Eggers, writing this time with Icelandic lyricist, poet, novelist and performer Sjón, plays it straighter and safer than expected. A key twist cracks the door to a stunning possibility that should lead Amleth to ask himself a variant of another Pattinson-affiliated meme staple: “What if I’m the bad guy?” Had Eggers and Sjón focused on the intricacies and complexities of that idea, the film’s inevitable climactic duel – a spectacular, one-on-one, Gates of Hel holmgång visually reminiscent of Obi-Wan’s dismantling of Vader alongside the lava flows of Mustafar – might have delivered something unforgettable.

“The Northman” has much to recommend it. Even though her part is small and not especially significant, fans can rightfully cheer the return to the big screen of Björk, absent (with the exception of “Drawing Restraint 9”) since she paid the price to an abusive Lars von Trier in “Dancer in the Dark” more than two decades ago. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga of the Birch Forest adds enough promise to make one wish the movie was called “The Northwoman.” Willem Dafoe’s holy fool Heimir is better than any CG effect. And I just can’t stop thinking about the striking orthodontics or dental adornments worn by the screaming shield maiden.

Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor’s Arden Shakespeare edition of “Hamlet” claims the story is second only to “Cinderella” as the world’s most-filmed, although the flood of “Dracula” variants, Sherlock Holmes iterations, and versions of “A Christmas Carol” are in the conversation. Eggers has joked that his long-gestating remake of “Nosferatu” could be cursed by the ghost of F. W. Murnau, but I hope he gets to it in the near future. Those carefully choreographed, single-shot takes and startlingly lit close-ups designed in collaboration with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke blow the spatially disorienting and over-edited style of so many contemporary action films completely out of the fjord.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The Daniels – Kwan and Scheinert – further cement their cult status with the hellzapoppin and appropriately titled “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the team’s follow-up to “Swiss Army Man.” That joint theatrical feature debut, the buzziest word-of-mouth must-see at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, remains the finest film ever made about a friendship between a marooned loner and a flatulent corpse. So what do you do for an encore? Sans Kwan, Scheinert directed oft-overlooked gem “The Death of Dick Long” in 2019, but the wide A24 release of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” should shine the brightest spotlight on the filmmakers to date.

Sprinting to cinemas just ahead of Sam Raimi’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – which premiered on March 11 as part of South by Southwest – also embraces the premise of infinite cosmological possibility, wrapping its old-fashioned family reconciliation drama in a sprawling tribute to classic kung fu fantasy. In their wild landscape, the Daniels catapult Michelle Yeoh’s frustrated laundromat proprietor onto the tracks of a rollercoaster careening through a dizzying set of alternative (sur)realities.

Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang may be on the cusp of divorce from husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, fantastic from start to finish), but that’s just one of her problems. A strained relationship with daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) and the recent arrival of disapproving father Gong Gong (James Hong) compound the stress of an IRS audit being conducted by Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis). During the tax probe, Evelyn is interrupted by Alpha Waymond, a version of her spouse familiar with a “verse-jumping” technology. Our protagonist may be the greatest failure of all the Evelyns who exist, but she also might have what it takes to save everything, everywhere, all at once.

A single viewing cannot do justice to the movie’s giddy array of references, shout-outs, and homages. One can already anticipate the swell of YouTubers gearing up to elucidate as many Easter eggs as a frame-by-frame analysis will allow. From a reconstruction of the Dawn of Man sequence from “2001: A Space Odyssey” to more subtle nods to the stylish looks of Kar-wai Wong’s distinctive photographic palette, Kwan and Scheinert cram so much information into their project, we marvel at the ability of the duo to ground such a kaleidoscopic carousel of eye candy in the recognizable feelings of frustration and regret that bedevil Evelyn.

Some sequences resemble the videogame-influenced kinetics of Edgar Wright’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” but the weird brew of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has its own distinct flavor. The Daniels plant a sloppy kiss on “The Matrix” and remix beloved Pixar rat Remy into the hysterical Racacoonie. A tough-as-nails martial arts mentor checks Tarantino checking the Shaw Brothers, and unless I’ve missed my mark, Kwan and Scheinert – longtime aficionados of the rectal – are sui generis when it comes to combat involving butt plug power-ups. At a few minutes short of two and a half hours, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” nearly wears out its welcome, but as far as hot dog-fingered audacity goes, the Daniels will make plenty of new eyeballs go googly.