Morning folks.
Another quick and dirty post for you. You’ve got a belated review of Black Widow that I wrote last year and didn’t publish, a rave about The Last Kingdom, and first a quick note about the new An American Werewolf in London 4k release from Arrow Films.
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That’s typical of the way Arrow present their discs, you get a lot of bang for your buck. It’s a nice object to own. The discs are laden with extras, many of which are feature-length. But what of the film?
Well, every time I see this, I still can’t believe that our high school teachers let us all sit and watch this in the Art Block Assembly Hall. If I remember rightly, I was 13 at the time. The sex scene and the sheer number of F-bombs (and one C-bomb which I noticed for the first time on this watch) would have been enough, you would think, to give them pause. That’s before you get to the mutant Nazi pig massacre, the porno theatre, the gore, and everything else.
I’m so glad they did. It’s a brilliant, funny, eerie, and occasionally genuinely quite scary movie. And yes, it’s a huge cliché to say this, but that transformation scene is still the best that’s ever been put on screen, even all these years later and with modern effects. Even when modern films come close, they at best look like a homage to this.
The 4k transfer is solid. One of the things I’ve learned since getting into this is that, while the analogue film keeps more data and therefore benefits most from this process, a side effect is that you can often see the grain of the film itself at such high resolutions, which would understandably put some people off. But there’s no doubt that this is the best version I’ve ever seen. Seeing individual raindrops trickling down characters’ faces was stunning. It sounds spectacular too, which is probably why I noticed that extra rude word this time.
Haven’t had time to even touch on all the extras, but there’s some great stuff about the special effects with some of the surviving props, a documentary tracing the history of the Universal werewolf movies, which is notable for pointing out that virtually all the ‘lore’ around lycanthropy comes from the movies. One of the most fascinating little extras is a short video essay on the Jewish symbolism in the picture. Believe me, once you’ve considered it, you can see it everywhere in this film, which, like so many great horror films, then reveals itself as an examination of bigotry and social exclusion. It’s clever stuff.
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Bernard Cornwell writes thrilling historical stories of heroism and derring-do. I’ve been a fan ever since I discovered his Sharpe stories, of which I’ve read every one.
He wrote the best version of the Arthurian legend that I’ve ever come across (it’s crying out for a film or TV adaptation) and while he’s sometimes critical of his work, and while if you read enough of an author’s stories then they can start to feel a bit samey sometimes, the man sure knows how to put a compelling story together. “Unputdownable” indeed.
The Last Kingdom series is set in embryonic England, in the mid to late Ninth Century. It’s the story of how England as we know it came to be, how our mongrel race formed an idea that became a nation that, for better or worse, would become the largest Empire the world has yet seen, with all the positives and manifest negatives that go along with it.
Cornwell is a genius at taking these massive, sweeping moments of seismic historical change and turning them into a visceral, personal story with characters that you grow to love.
The TV series, which originally aired on the BBC before going to Netflix, uses the books as an inspiration in the same way that Cornwell used history. Those familiar with the novels will see substantial changes. The story hits the same beats but uses its own drum, and I’ve found that wonderful because in effect I can enjoy the same story from two viewpoints and have twice the fun.
Very briefly, it’s the story of Uthred, from his childhood as a second-born son of a Saxon lord, through his upbringing as a Viking, to his strained relationship with Alfred the Great and beyond. It fuses politics with incredible action set pieces, and delights in tormenting Uthred with impossible choices in a time of brutal conflict and short, bitter lives. He’s a realist and a cynic, but more than anything else he’s a man of pathological honour, who always does what’s right, regardless of the consequences. In short, he’s a hero.
The acting is uniformly excellent. The cinematography is beautiful, making skilful use of natural light, particularly at magic hour. There is equal parts intriguing drama and top-class action. And much as I love Sharpe, the TV series always suffered from a lack of budget… Waterloo looked like a scrap in a pub car park. That’s not the case here. The Last Kingdom has peak TV production values written all over it. The late Rutger Hauer even crops up in the first episode.
In short, there are lots of pretty people doing alternately heroic and villainous things. What’s not to love about that? The final series (‘season,’ if you must) is on Netflix now and it is the best yet. It is more complex, darker, and it’s tying all the hanging threads together, leading towards a colossal conflict with an eminently hateable villain.
It is very violent, I should say that, and occasionally gory. But hey, it’s about Vikings. What did you expect? Cross stitch and vegan recipe ideas? Also, it has plot holes you could sail a Viking longship through, but none of that matters, as you’re propelled by the weight of the fantastic story.
As Cornwell himself says:
“It is story, story, story. That is your business. Your job is not to educate readers on the finer points of Elizabethan diplomacy or Napoleonic warfare or villainous terrorist plots, your job is to divert and amuse people who have had a hard day at work.”
The Last Kingdom is available on Netflix now.
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Black Widow
Regular readers know I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Disney and Marvel. I’m hardly alone in that. I recently talked about physical media and bemoaned the fact that Disney is doing more than any other studio to kill it off. Fair enough. It makes good business sense… no one can fault their commercial savvy. Notably, this was the film that saw them settle out of court with Scarlett Johansson after they shoved it onto streaming sooner than she had agreed. Make no mistake, this juggernaut of a studio wants us all on Disney+ and will happily plough through cinemas and physical home media to achieve it.
But they also make some bloody great movies.
Black Widow is a kind of ‘midquel’ story set between the events of Civil War and Infinity War, in which Natasha Romanov goes back to her roots, kicks a tremendous amount of arse and reconnects with her surrogate family, played by David Harbor, Rachel Weisz and Florence Pugh, who I’ve raved about before.
Negatives first. Stop doing bloody airy-fairy covers of 90s rock classics in films! Gah! It’s bad enough that every bloody trailer since The Social Network has some breathy, pouting version of a grunge banger slowed down to the point where I feel like I’m on ketamine, now you’re putting it in the credits, too? Stop it! Just bloody stop it! Write your own bloody songs FFS!
Ahem. Sorry.
Now, other things that didn’t work – the whole middle section. The film just stops. There’s this dull as dishwater family reunion that felt like a deleted scene from East-Enders, but with cod Russian accents. The actors sit around awkwardly waiting for the next set-piece so that they can go back to looking cool for their kids.
And talking of bad accents, Ray Winstone… good grief.
Finally, what was David Harbor for? Seriously? Watch the film and tell me what he does. There’s some mediocre comic relief to do with a certain Captain, a couple of action scenes where he’s the least interesting element, and finally he loses a fight. That’s it.
There was a running joke among computer geeks in the 90s that Microsoft was hiring anyone who could string a line of code together, not because they needed them, but just to stop rivals hiring them. It feels like that now with Marvel and any vaguely charismatic actor, or for that matter, director.
But these are minor, predictable, and unimportant criticisms. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, more so than much of the Marvel output I’ve seen recently. I think it was mainly because it was standalone. A straightforward, self-contained, entertaining, and frivolous lump of entertainment, like an ice cream sandwich or a fried breakfast. I gorged it and moved on.
David Mitchell wrote a very well-argued piece in the Guardian recently bemoaning the latest Bond movie (it’s full of spoilers, be warned). I disagree with him as you’ll know if you’ve read my review, but I understand his frustration and like him and many others I love “…the fights, the attractive people, the exotic locations, the snazzy cars, the cheesy gadgets, the wacky villains and the stolen super weapon[s].”
Well Black Widow which directly references Bond, has all that and more. Mitchell misses the point that we have that in abundance right now, it’s a golden age for it. I love the bravery of the Bond producers for what they’ve done with such an old and well-loved franchise, and I love the swagger of the MCU for movies like this.
Naturally, I’m more excited about finally getting to watch Spiderman: No Way Home soon and I’m looking forward to Sam Raimi’s take on the MCU in Multiverse of Madness, but I don’t get some of the negativity around Black Widow. It’s not going to win any awards, it’s unlikely to top anyone’s list of favourite superhero films, but it exemplifies what the MCU does best – bloody good entertainment.
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Thanks for reading.
Thanks for letting me write.
See you soon.
GG.
