Bloody Vikings

Vikings has very rarely gotten their due in cinema history, which I find it a bit odd. Even though a complex Nordic culture with interesting gods and a drive for both exploration and pillaging in early Medieval settings might seem like prone for exciting historical adventure movies, more often than not, something goes awry with these. Anyway, let's take a look at several of the more interesting ones.

Erik the Viking (UK/Sweden 1989)
Dir. Terry Jones

Freed from obligations from Monty Python, director Jones was free to do whatever he wanted. His interests in medieval history, comedy and children's books met with an adaptation of his own book. He should have aimed the film more obviously for children. As it is now, the film has problems with its tone, as there are parts where there's too few jokes to be a comedy, and parts where the adventure doesn't advance at all. As a visualist or a mythic world-builder, Jones is clearly secondary to Terry Gilliam and doesn't quite get how to work his more fantastic ideas into the story properly.

The worst thing about it is that the comedy itself is often lacking. The movie opens with some rape humor which certainly hasn't aged well. Jones seemed to have made the same mistake as Graham Chapman with Yellowbeard thinking that rape is a good source of laughs. It does introduce us to the timid lead character, but it is a bit of a cheap way to get sympathy when he has performance issues during a pillaging event, and have him turn on some of the more rapey vikings.

Tim Robbins does do a good job, and there are some actual good laughs to be had from Tim McInnery's childish viking complaining about sitting arrangements to John Cleese's cheery sociopath order people getting flayed. The contrast between the awfulness of the violence and people might have worked better today as a kind of parody of Game of Thrones -like sadist entertainment. Jones himself pops as a clueless leader of a lost continent. I admit I have a soft spot for the film and have seen it a lot more times than its actual qualities would warrant.

★★1/2

Erik the Conqueror (Gli invasori, Italy/France 1961)
Dir. Mario Bava

Bava's historically inaccurate film sees Vikings clash against the Brits in the 8th century. This is contrasted by having one of orphaned twin boys being raised by the Brits and the other by Vikings. A fate of countries laying on the schism between siblings of course has been seen used from the Book of Moses to New Gods by Jack Kirby. It is a reasonably epic, if not terribly original way of presenting conflict.

As is often the case in the director's works, visually it is purely stunning, with elaborate color lights and psychedelia. There are many Technicolor epics with a lot bigger budgets that never were this inventive in their visuals. The film was mostly shot in a studio, but several battles are also shot on location with natural light and the landscapes a Medieval Nordic adventure warrants. These scenes bring a little contrast, but are just as good-looking, with merciless natural powers highligting the brutality of the warriors fighting on the same canvas.

But Cameron Mitchell is not a very interesting leading man, and in the film his voice is in fact dubbed. I like him better on 80's trash movies phoning it in while visibly drunk.


★★★ 1/2

Knives of the Avenger (I coltelli del vendicatore, Italy 1966)
Dir. Mario Bava



Bava did another viking picture, with his star Cameron Mitchell also attached. As the audience's tastes have swithed from large epics to smaller, more spaghetti western -like character studies, this one is more akin a western set in the viking era. The obvious comparison is 1953's Shane from which the movie's plot is pilfered. A disgraced viking warrior becomes a protector of a woman and her child when a group of more violent warriors come calling for his past mistakes. If the previous film was about brotherhood, this one circles again around family, with its themes finding redemption in adopted fatherhood.

The film's look is decidedly more down-to-earth in tones and settings than his previous viking film. Nevertheless the gloomy athmosphere is strong and Bava has a knack for keeping things interesting with some wild camera angles and a nice sense of misé-en-scene. A lot of the action is set on limited sets, darkly-lit farmhouses, taverns and even caves. The pacing is quite slow and one does get a bit bored in the meantime, whereas Erik moved along quite swiftly.

I feel Mitchell has a better role here, having him act more of a stone-faced loner with undelying guilt and growing warmth, is more suited to his talents, as he manages to give his character an air of mystery. In action scenes, though Bava can still play gritty and dirty even if its not quite the blood bath that would warrant such a title in my opinion.

★★★

Viking (Russia, 2016)
Dir. Andrei Kravchuk



With several popular tv series set on either the viking era (Vikings) or a mythical age quite similar to it (Game of Thrones), there has been several small-budget films that have tried to capture that same audience. Some of them are laughable (like 2014's Northmen - a Viking Saga), and many of them have a similar boring gray scale, predictably boring plots and nothing interesting to say. From modern viking films I remember Nicolas Wingding Refn's Valhalla Rising to at least try a little as compared to most of them.

I feel the Russian Viking is a case in point. I would have wanted to like this a lot more since it took seven years to make, and expected more of a Russian flavour to the story, as opposed to just do the same thing everyone else is. It sells itself for being historically accurate, which is itself a very dubious claim, and doesn't really do the boring story any favours. In many parts it is confusing and goes off in rails when compromised would have at least made the plotline somewhat understandable. Plus, it's nearly 2,5 hours long so there's an extra hour of suffering through this when compared to most other films on this post.

The title in and of itself is false marketing. While it takes place roughly in the Viking era, it is more concerned with the goings-on in Russian Novgorod in Prince Vladimir's reign, his brother, the warlord Kievan Rus and the Slavonic wars during that era. The virtues of the film are firstly to generate interest in Russian history, and secondly of its (very expensive-looking) battle scenes, which are in parts very impressive looking. If you really want to see the movie, read up on history before viewing, so the logic between characters making decisions and the context of many actions are more easily understood.

★★

The Raven Flies (Hrafninn flýgur, Iceland/Sweden 1984)
Dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson

My favorite Viking film comes from Iceland, which I feel is the best-suited country in the world to tackle the history, since most of the country's occupants are descendants anyway. I wouldn't call this any truer to history, though, even if more care than usual is made to the Medieval costumes and armors. The film is basically a spaghetti western revenge story, with tiny ponies instead of horses, and I love the film for it.

The film captures the dark and gloomy nature of Nordic countries in a way a film like Knives of the Avenger attempted, but didn't quite feel genuine. Life is hard, cheap, brutal and over in an instant. Blood feuds reign from generation to generation. Yet the film concerns ways of trying to break a never-ending cycle of violence. It sees a Celtic underdog prevail by using his wits and knowledge of viking's superstitions against his enemies. With plenty of close-up shots and ugly glances.

The genuinety from the actual settings makes this feel a lot more down-to-earth and less exoticized than most viking movies. It pays a lot to show the real Icelandic shore line and the right kind of houses so it doesn't feel like a general Hollywood epic. One can practically feel the cold wind and the dread of the upcoming winter.

The film spawned a number of sequels, none of which I have sadly seen.

★★★★

Stop! Motion Time!

As readers might know already, I'm a big animation buff. When the Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature were announced, however, I realized that I had missed a lot of the year's crop, which is particularly a shame since the nominees include three stop motion pictures. That sort of animation is generally way more fun than CGI animation, since puppets tend to have more personality than ultra-slick computer models. Two of these stop-motioners have a spoooky horror theme, and one is just about your basic looting, plundering and causing a ruckus.

If you're curious about what I thought of Brave and Wreck-It-Ralph, you can read my reviews by clicking their titles in this sentence.

Frankenweenie
Director: Tim Burton

Tim Burton's latest film could be seen as an attempt to please his old fans, who have grown incresingly disappointed with his recent body of work. This attempt concerns updating his beloved short film he made in the 1980's to a feature film animation. The original Frankenweenie is pretty much perfect as such, and Burton tends to fall in the pitfalls of stretching the story in an artificial manner in this longer version. Still, at many points it does feel to have the creative energy and gentle satire on suburban America that Burton's good films in the 80's and 90's had. The heart of Frankenweenie, a story of love and friendship, has also remained intact.

Young Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is a clear Mary Sue of Burton's youth, a creative boy that has few friends, and prefers staying indoors to film monster movies or do scientific experiments to going out to play. His best friend is the family dog Sparky, who is a curious mutt, and always ready for an adventure with his owner. Victor is eager to participate in the school's science fair, inspired by the new eccentric teacher Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau). Victor's dad (Martin Short) agrees, on the condition that Victor tries out sports, particularly baseball. On the day of Victor's game, Sparky escapes to follow his master to the field. When he runs out to catch the ball flying out to the street, the dog has a fatal run-in with a car.

The broken Victor finds a new chance to bring his friend back to life, when he learns that electricity has a way of making dead tissue twitch. But his successful experiment rises interest in his science fair rivals, all who want to try it out on their pets long gone. The climax has Burton gleefully ripping off various monster movie clichés with glee, as the creatures wreck havok. The film turns from Edward Scissorhands -type outcast drama into more of a Mars Attacks! type of mischief-making comedy. Balancing these two approaches isn't always consistent.

Fortunately, Burton mellows out by the final scene, which is as charming as it was in the original film. The puppetry is magnificent, with the animals being super-cute and the humans emotive and like Burton's drawings having popped to life. As a contrast to Burton's previous animated features, there are no memorable, eye-popping song sequences, but the story wouldn't need any anyway. The old school -style slow, black-and-white storytelling works in this film's case, but it also drove audiences away from theatres. Kids these days. As it is, it's a nice little film reminding that Burton still carries some of that creative energy that raised him to the top of Hollywood in the first place. Let's hope he can still utilize it in his live action films as well.

★★★

Pirates! A Band of Misfits (a.k.a. The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists)
Director: Peter Lord

The latest feature from Aardman studios blends stop motion wax dolls and CGI backgrounds in a visual style that's epic and finely detailed and hand-crafted at the same time. It's got a silly sense of humor mixing non-sequiturs and the unexpected with good, tested british wit in the fashion of Monty Python. It's got chase scenes and exotic locales and The Clash and The Pogues on the soundtrack. Yet as a whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) has declared a war against piracy, with plenty of the most notorious outlaws having already been captured. But there are still eager sea-farers out there. One such a motley crew is the band of misfits led by The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant). They are a bit too nice to be plundering scallywags, but love the pirate lifestyle. With their antics, The Pirate Captain figures they could finally win the Pirate of the Year Award, given to the captain with the biggest booty. But seizing ships and stealing treasures doesn't seem to be his strongest skill.

Baby-talking to pets is.

When the crew runs into the young scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant), they get informed that The Captain's parrot Polly is in fact the only remaining Dodo in the world. The prize for bringing such a zoological treasure to London would be huge. But the only problem is that London is Victoria's stronghold, and the pirates need to disguise themselves to not be caught.

While a lot of pieces in this one are at the right places, and it is funny and amusing enough, there's something vital missing in this film. As of now, it's amusing enough, if a fairly forgettable caper. It's a bit hard to grasp what's wrong with it. Perhaps the movie tries too hard to please all audiences. While the script is smart, it also lacks some sort of edginess all the best comedies have.

I also think that the personalities of the various pirates in the crew could have been played with a lot more. It's probably a joke stemming from the original children's book this is based on, to name all the characters in such a functionalist manner (i.e. "The Pirate with a Scarf", "The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate" or "The Pirate who likes Sunsets and Kittens"). But in the long run playing them all just for gags takes away from the audience's involvement in their escapades. It's a bad sign if no one gives a damn if they are going to cope or not. Also, the chase scenes aren't as elaborate as in, say, Wallace & Gromit, now just featuring too many characters screaming and spazzing out instead of rolling along, unexpectedly but with the determination of a speed train.

★★★

ParaNorman
Directors: Chris Butler, Sam Fell

I was wary of this children's horror fable beforehand, simply because it features zombies as the central horrors. I used to love zombies until they became the most overplayed and tiresome thing in popular culture and having them featured in a kid's movie was just another low in their road to irrelevance. But gladly, the central zombies here weren't either Romero-like man eaters or even fast-running video game monsters. These are good old-fashioned magic zombies, undead pilgrims rising from their graves due to a curse.

So the film features the outcast 10-year-old Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who can see the dead. His parents and older sister won't believe him and other kids at school make fun of him. One day, Norman meets Mr. Prenderghast (John Goodman), a hobo that claims he's his uncle, and that he has a ritual which protects the town of Blithe Hollow from an ancient curse. When the ritual fails and Prenderghast dies, it's up to Norman to save the village from an old evil going back to the times of the pilgrims. But Norman will learn that the best way to destroy wickedness is goodness and being nice.

The film has a nice array of characters, and the zombies in particular with their slacked jaws are suitably spooky-looking. The cast is filled with your basic small-town archetypes, with the more notable characters coming from the realm of the dead. However, the film somewhat lacks in suspense and athmosphere-creating. Anyone actually thinking this is better-crafted than Brave must be out of their mind. Even 10 seconds of a set up scene of that film's misty moors of Scotland is more exciting than this whole film.

This is by no means a bad movie, but it's Monster House meets The Frighteners stich is a bit worn-out. I do appreciate the early shout-out to Troll 2, though.

★★1/2

Peter Falk - An Angel Got His Wings

The sad news about the passing of the legendary Peter Falk broke last week. I feel I should remember the great man, but don't have the time to do a larger-scale post mortem post like I did with Leslie Nielsen. So, I'm just going to reminisce two films that are among his most beloved, and happen to be in my recent memory. So here's to Peter Michael Falk, born September 16, 1927, passed away June 23, 2011.

The Princess Bride (1987)
Director: Rob Reiner

 
Generally speaking, good films don't need a narrator, let alone one that's a character narrating the story within the story. But Falk's role as the Grandfather is really essential in this one. It's a story about how stories can make us feel better, and that of course needs its storyteller. And any story is better if the storyteller is sly and smart. The Grandfather here is a dead-on performance at that, mocking his grandson for wanting different solutions than the ones available, but still having the necessary warmth and love in his narration. He also crucially sells a story with "Princess" in the title to a little boy, which is no small feat. There is perhaps a tad too many meta-level gags in the film, but Falk always manages to sell them just as good to us viewers.



The story he tells is filled with the basic ingredients of fairy tales. The titular princess, Buttercup (Robin Wright), is kidnapped by a trio of well-meaning thieves. She is rescued by a dashing masked swashbuckler, who turns out to be her long-lost childhood love Westley (Cary Elwes). But the princess's obnoxious fianceé Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) needs to have her back. He's plotting to use her death as an excuse to start a war with a neighboring country and Westley stands in the way. Inconcievable!

Altough Reiner is clearly working on a tight budget here (it looks more like a sunday afternoon BBC historical drama than LotR), the wonderful script by William Goldman and the perfect casting more than make up for it. It is one of those films that has a character gallery to die for and one that can be quoted at almost any circumstance ("Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" being the most favoured one). Even though it uses fairy tale conventions, it rarely feels clichéd and it rolls along nicely for its brief runtime. And even though it is a film of the '80s, it feels like a timeless one, rather than something forever bound to its period. No wonder it is beloved by many adults. Oh, and it's referenced even in Troll 2.

★★★★

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987)
Director: Wim Wenders

 
Wow, I never realized that these two movies were actually made on the same year. Falk was on a roll here. To balance the more entertaining values of PB, WoD (or The Heaven Over Berlin as I like to call it) is an art film about the last days of the divided Berlin and the careful optimism and melancholia caused by it. Falk's character (Peter Falk) neatly falls to the optimism side.

The angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) is a guardian of the city of Berlin. He gives comfort to those that are lonely and helps along their path even if they can't see him or know that he is there. When Damiel sees a beatiful circus trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), he immediately falls for her. Now Damiel must decide whether to give up being an angel and turn into a mortal man to meet his beloved one.

The star actor Peter Falk (Peter Falk) surprisingly spots Damiel. Falk reveals that he himself used to be an angel and knows just how Damiel feels. He wanted to experience the world rather than to just watch and thus turned himself into a mortal. Now he's in Berlin to shoot a period film about the city's Nazi past, which he's also writing. He's having a writer's block, with which Damiel helps him. Falk has some world-weariness to him, but he is so damn lovable that the essence of his character shines through. And he takes his Columbo-reminding profile with good humour to boot. It isn't easy to be human but for the chance to live, love and experience, one couldn't want for nothing more. Falk's ex-angel finds particular joy in eating frankenfurters and drawing other people.



Wender's film is a love letter to Berlin, and has gone on to be beloved by friends of the city (myself included of course). It has historical value as well, as it shows the wall still standing and how the country looked just before the fall of Communism. The black-and-white photography for the majority of the film is gorgeously beatiful, but once Damiel earns his humanity, the switches to color. The warm earthly tones emphasize the film's humane message pretty well. The film shares PB's theme of the need for a storyteller, which it seems, angels are particularly good at. As is Falk.

★★★★ 1/2

Image courtesy of http://www.grouchoreviews.com

Oh, and one more thing. We shouldn't of course forget that Falk was also perhaps the essential and the best original TV detective. Lt. Columbo was harmless-seeming crime solver, but actually a razor sharp mind. The structure of the show actually had the villains be the anti-heroes of the show, as we followed how inevitably their antagonist Columbo would catch them for lying or to slip a confession. Columbo was very down-to earth and friendly, the kind of police one wouldn't mind having a beer with. Rest in Peace, Philip (or was it Frank? L.T.?). You may be gone, but your foolproof detectiving style will live on in the works of cheap imitations. We still know that there could only be one such as you.