Tag: Robert Eggers

Cinema Dispatch: Nosferatu

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Nosferatu and all the images you see in this review are owned by Focus Features

Directed by Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers has been one of my favorite filmmakers to keep an eye on in recent years with The Witch and The Lighthouse being two of the best films in the last decade, and while The Northman wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be, a remake of Nosferatu seemed like the perfect pairing with such a brilliant filmmaker. The original Nosferatu is one of the first great horror movies in cinema and began a long tradition of filmmakers making knockoffs of popular works to avoid copyright laws, and it was even followed by a remake in 1979 that is somehow even better than the original which leaves Eggers with some sizable shoes to fill even for someone as talented as him. Will this latest attempt to reimaging the terror of Count Orlok prove to be the best one yet, or does the shadow loom too large for any modern filmmaker to get out from under? Let’s find out!!

Thomas and Ellen Hutter (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp) have only just been married, and yet news has come down from Thomas’s employer that he must go to Transylvania to meet with a very important client in the Carpathian Mountains. This Count Orlok or some such (Bill Skarsgård) is an odd fellow, but Thomas’s boss (Simon McBurney) assures him that a deal like this will make his career, and so he goes off to meet the man in the hopes of giving himself an Ellen a fine start on their life as husband and wife. With Ellen staying at their friends, The Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Courrin), Thomas makes the treacherous journey that leads him to a world far more sinister and terrifying than he could ever imagine. Of course, there is one person who did imagine it as Ellen has been struck with terrifying nightmares of a mysterious creature that will kill everyone around her, and when she starts to have fits in the middle of the night, The Hardings call in Doctor Sievers (Ralph Ineson) to diagnose the mysterious behavior, and when he is left baffled, he enlists the help of Professor Franz (Willem Dafoe) who seems to think that Ellen is right to be afraid of what is coming. What manner of creature does Thomas find at Orlok’s castle, and can he escape the horrors with his body and soul intact? Why does Ellen have this connected to the dark forces surrounding her home, and can this be used to find salvation from the encroaching darkness? Is it just me, or does this sound just as much like a soap opera as it does a horror film?

I felt the same way when they announced Death Stranding 2.
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Cinema Dispatch: The Northman

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

The Northman and all the images you see in this review are owned by Focus Features

Directed by Robert Eggers

So not only did The Daniels make one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, we got a movie from Robert Eggers just a few weeks after! Either someone out there likes me or I’m being set up for a huge downfall, which admittedly is thematically consistent with Eggers’ other work. Both The Witch and The Lighthouse were two of the best movies in their respective years and it looks like Hollywood is taking notice as they’ve given him a blank check to make his unique form of creeping dread and otherworldly terror as big and bombastic as any summer blockbuster! Do the bigger budget and expansive production give Eggers the room he needs to make the best movie of his career, or is he better suited for something on a much smaller scale? Let’s find out!!

Back in the time of The Vikings, there was a king named Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) who was unjustly slain by his own brother (Claes Bang) in front of the young prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) in a power grab for his kingdom and his queen (Nicole Kidman). The prince manages to escape and swears vengeance on his uncle which he nurtures into a finely distilled ball of pure rage and spends the next twenty years bulking up and kicking butt until he is ready to take back his kingdom. Now a grown man (Alexander Skarsgård), Amleth pillages the countryside with a group of like-minded and similarly buff Viking dudes until he gets word that his uncle has been deposed and is living with the queen and their two sons on some farm in Iceland. He heads over there on a slave ship to try and get close to him while meeting the fair maiden Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) who may or may not be a witch, and is similarly interesting in killing the man who will be enslaving them both. Amleth manages to stay unrecognized as he becomes one of his uncle’s slaves and plots his revenge which includes sewing chaos during the night and stabbing dudes with a magic sword he finds. Still, this proves to not be as simple a task as Amleth believed it to be for all those years, and now he’s faced with the true consequences of his actions which forces him to weigh the cost of his vengeance against the balance he hopes to restore with that blood. Will Amleth be able to avenge his father, save his mother, and be the hero that would make Odin proud? Will his uncle catch wise to this hulking blonde brute being the instrument of his torment, and even if he does realize his identity, is there anything he can do to stop his nephew from carrying out his quest? Is it just me or does a blood feud really do wonders for your physique? I mean jeez, they didn’t even have EMS back!

[THENORTHMANCD1 – I guess when you can’t get whey protein in a jar you just have to get it the old-fashioned way by drinking the blood of your enemies!]

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Cinema Dispatch: The Lighthouse

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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The Lighthouse and all the images you see in this review are owned by A24

Directed by Robert Eggers

The director’s last film The Witch was a PHENOMENAL film that is easily one of the best horror films in the last decade (certainly better than Hereditary), so I was excited to see what he was going to do next.  Lo and behold, his next movie starts two of the best character actors working today, is presented in Black and White, and is about something relatively mundane but will no doubt lead to horror and intrigue!  Jeez, you might as well have wrapped it up, put a nice bow on it, and put it on a drone to crash into my house!  Does Robert Eggers’s second film exceed the high bar he set with his first outing, or is a talent as great as his still not immune to the dread Sophomore Slump?  Let’s find out!!

Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattison) is the new assistant lighthouse keeper watching over a crappy little light house on a crappy little rock not too far from shore but far enough that you wouldn’t survive an attempt to swim towards it.  His supervisor Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) is an old sea captain with the accent, peg leg, and pipe to back it up, and his task is to whip this young whipper snapper into ship shape if he’s to one day maintain a lighthouse of his very own.  Seems simple enough, and they certainly have more than enough work to do maintaining this house and the light therein, but over time it starts to become clear that maybe Captain Wake isn’t all he claims to be and that maybe Winslow isn’t as cut out for this work as he initially thought.  Oh well, it’s not like he’s gonna be there FOREVER, right?  He’s only there for a month before being moved somewhere else… oh what’s that?  There’s a big storm coming that’ll make it impossible for his ship to come anytime soon?  Well then!  That’s… unfortunate for everyone involved.  So Ephraim is stuck there for a while and with each passing day it seems that little bit of his sanity has gone with it as things get weirder and weirder around here; not the least of which being Captain Wake who REALLY seems to like the light at the top of the tower.  I mean… he REALLY likes that light!  So much so that Ephraim hasn’t had a chance to maintain it despite that being part of his training because Wake wants to keep it all to himself… for some reason.  Can Ephraim keep his head down, focus on his work, and stay out of trouble long enough for the lighthouse company to send him another boat?  What is going on up there at the top of the tower, and is that just the tip of the iceberg as far as strange happenings on this unassuming island?  After seeing Pattinson brood his way through this, is there anyone else who COULD be Batman!?

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People are starring miserably at the camera.  Of COURSE it’s yours!

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