movie reviews for the northman

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The Northman Reviews

Neither tragedy nor Eggers skimp on violence, screams, sweat, blood and swords, along with ambitious mise en scène, some of the best photography and one of the most epic soundtracks of the year. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 19, 2023

Filled with stunning cinematography, the film is an intense, immersive, sometimes surreal, descent into an otherworldly milieu of folkloric horror and medieval barbarism.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2023

As a bloody and most certainly trippy revenge tale, The Northman is astounding in many places. Eggers may not have created the ultimate Viking tale, but he has crafted an astonishing spectacle that combines his established style with something larger.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2023

Eggers’ visual style is a roller coaster of primordial, oneiric imagery of an epic, wild landscape, turbulent supernatural forces and untamed nature sans any whiff of domestication.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2023

Robert Eggers has crafted one for the ages… The Northman is a cinematic epic that blew my mind from start to finish. Lavishing cinematography that brings to life this era, visceral violence that adds to the world, & a jaw dropping third act

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The Northman is an incredibly gifted film full of hostility, genealogy, strength, and desire.

Violent and powerful from start to finish, The Northman tells an epic, period accurate Viking tale that easily immerses its audience throughout the entire run-time.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 25, 2023

The Northman is a story that’s been told many times over, and save for showcasing the stunning scenery of Ireland, this adaptation is nothing to write home about.

The Northman isn’t trying to elevate horror nor dismantle fetishistic fantasies. It’s a fully-formed exercise in realigning blockbuster pictures back to the way they should be: big, visually breathtaking, and bolstered by a unique vision.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 21, 2023

By the time the end credits hit, you will be waiting for it to begin anew, and that is one of the highest compliments you could give a movie of this size and breadth.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 21, 2023

It provides all the weirdness, gore, beauty and singularity that you would expect from this director’s take on a Viking tale of vengeance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 9, 2023

The Northman’s carefully choreographed, single-shot takes and startlingly lit close-ups blow the spatially disorienting and over-edited style of so many contemporary action films completely out of the fjord.

Full Review | May 9, 2023

The Northman is practically bursting with testosterone. The story of Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård), a Viking Prince hellbent on revenge, Robert Eggers‘s third film is essentially a case study in the destructive nature of unyielding masculinity.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Feb 18, 2023

Northman is one of Robert Egger best films. The scope, the scale, the atmospheric building of Norse mythology is groundbreaking. Along with some insanely well acted performances and beyond thrilling action and revenge based story. Must Watch Masterpiece!

Full Review | Original Score: 9.5/10 | Dec 26, 2022

The Northman creates a unique saga that taps into something truly primal before one hell of an ending.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Dec 4, 2022

An intoxicating and epic blend of violence, mysticism, and breathtaking visuals.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 11, 2022

Spectacle, pageantry and myth combine with blood, mud and abs for a dazzling, uproarious Viking spree in which Alexander Skarsgård seeks to avenge the murder of his father with the aid of Anya Taylor-Joy and Icelandic national treasure Björk.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2022

The Northman stands as a stark reminder that there is still a place in cinema for gorgeous, inspired odysseys, rife with literary allusions, deep-seated spiritual meanings, and an exploration of complex human emotions.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Sep 24, 2022

This brutally violent, yet soaringly lyrical action epic is quite unlike anything captured on screen before.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2022

The Northman is an epic the likes of which we hardly see in Hollywood anymore, carefully curated by a master of the medium and packed with powerhouse performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

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The Northman First Reviews: Bold, Unflinching, Visually Breathtaking

Critics say robert eggers' viking revenge tale boasts his trademark mysticism and sense of atmosphere, but it's a brutal, invigorating spectacle that's his most accessible film yet..

TAGGED AS: Action , Film , films , movie , movies

Robert Eggers , the bold visionary behind The Witch and The Lighthouse , is back with another ambitiously accurate period piece in The Northman . Starring Alexander Skarsgård as a Hamlet-esque Viking and Nicole Kidman as his mother, it is said to be the filmmaker’s most accessible yet, in part because it’s an historical action movie with a relatively sizable budget. The first reviews of The Northman are mostly very positive, with critics highlighting the performances and the craftsmanship, which come together in a spectacular blockbuster unlike any we’ve gotten in a long time.

Here’s what critics are saying about The Northman :

Is this one of the most unique films of the year?

It’s been a minute since we had something like it. It’s bold, gritty, and just downright awesome. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

While it’s a story you’ve seen before, you’ve never seen it like this. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

It is invigorating to see a studio-backed piece that is allowed to be uncompromisingly grim and savage. – Michelle Kisner, The Movie Sleuth

Among the best films I’ve seen in the last few years. It’s a stone-cold masterpiece. – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

The Northman feels unusually thin, with less meat on its bones than 2007’s schlocky Pathfinder or your basic Conan movie. – Peter Debruge, Variety

How does it compare to Robert Eggers’ other films?

A considerable step up in scope. – Jordan Raup, The Film Stage

With The Northman , he delivers what might be his most grounded and straightforward story thus far. – Patrick Cavanaugh, ComicBook.com

It makes the freaky artisanal horror that put director Robert Eggers on the map — The Witch and The Lighthouse — look like Disney movies. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

It’s less resonant than Eggers’ debut film, The Witch . – Katie Rife, Polygon

If there’s one thing The Northman is missing from the rest of Eggers’ oeuvre, it is that lack of madness that made parts of The Witch and The Lighthouse almost feel like a catharsis. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

It lacks the element of surprise that made The Witch and The Lighthouse feel like instant classics. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Director Robert Eggers on the set of The Northman (2022)

(Photo by Aidan Monaghan/©Focus Features)

Will mainstream audiences enjoy it?

They will. Because this is the kind of filmmaking that rips you out of your body so hard that you’re liable to forget what year it is. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

It’s his most accessible, and certainly the most exciting… The Northman isn’t a movie for everybody, but it’s the Robert Eggers movie that’s probably for the widest audience. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

Eggers’ most accessible film yet… though the bone-crunching gore and dashes of cosmic mystery prevent The Northman from being anything close to “mainstream.” – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

The Northman is destined to be a bit of a cult favorite, but it may also have a chance at more. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Eggers, who let his freak flag fly with A24, has reverted to a more conventional mode for this relatively mainstream Focus Features release, eschewing the elevated language of The Lighthouse . – Peter Debruge, Variety

Will it appeal to fans of history and historical epics?

Meticulously researched, it makes other Viking shows and movies look cartoonish by comparison. – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

The sets and costumes crafted by Eggers regulars Craig Lathrop and Linda Muir put any of the film’s contemporaries to shame (yes, even Gladiator … especially Gladiator ). – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

In terms of making history exciting and engrossing, The Northman is about as titillating as gateway drugs get. – Katie Rife, Polygon

What other comparisons does The Northman invite?

It’s as if The Green Knight got passed through a “bro” filter. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

It’s an audaciously bonkers movie that keeps threatening to careen off into some kind of weird no man’s land where Game of Thrones meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail . – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Feels more like a heavy-metal music video, a testosterone-fueled melange of fire, blood, nudity, and screaming, fueled by hatred and hallucinatory shamanic rituals. – Katie Rife, Polygon

This [Shakespearean] drama very much takes Amleth away from the thespian green room and simplifies the story along Lion King lines (no Hakuna Matata though). – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

The movie that The Northman most resembles is The Revenant , an impressively orchestrated marathon of misery that prioritized directorial skill over audience engagement. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Alexander Skarsgård in The Northman (2022)

How is Alexander Skarsgård in the lead?

Skarsgård has never been better or more suited to a role. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

Prince Amleth is the hunky, heroically vengeful killing machine with a heart that Skarsgård was born to play. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth should become his definitive role. It’s one of those unforgettable performances that seems bound to be iconic. – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

A superb Skarsgård balances the bodily vigorousness required with the shattered innocence that defines his part. – Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist

Muscles only go so far to compensate for the strange emptiness behind young Skarsgård’s eyes. – Peter Debruge, Variety

Will it particularly delight True Blood fans?

Longtime fans will get a kick out of him tapping into the cultural roots of his ancient True Blood vampire, Eric Northman, too. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

It’s truly a full-circle moment. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

How is Nicole Kidman?

It’s a role that truly highlights the range that Kidman is capable of. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

Kidman delivers some of her best work. – Jeff Nelson, Showbiz Cheat Sheet

It’s Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrún who really steals the show. She has some incredibly intense, emotionally complex moments, and you believe every second. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

She delivers a performance so feral it seems to shake the very foundations of the frame she inhabits. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

Kidman is a hoot, juggling fire and ice in an enjoyably over-the-top turn. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

How is the action?

The fight sequences are incredible. Meticulously choreographed and shot with purpose. The battles are bloody and intense. It’s not overly stylized. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

The choreography of the combat scenes — both the staging and the shooting, in long, unbroken takes — is mind-blowing. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Like a grim, grounded war movie, in which the battle scenes play out in a slow, weighty, almost plodding manner, meticulously choreographed to be as brutish and realistic as possible. – Hoai-Tran Bui, Slashfilm

The inevitable final showdown [is] one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on film. It’s as if George Lucas filmed the finale of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for real. – Germain Lussier, io9.com

There’s a brilliant set piece where Eggers shoots a Berserker siege in a single, unbroken take that will be discussed for years to come. – Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

The Northman is never dull. The sheer muscularity of Eggers’ direction denies it that chance… also, someone gets decapitated like every 10 minutes. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

How does the movie look?

Visually, The Northman is breathtaking combining beautiful vistas with fantastical imagery. – Michelle Kisner, The Movie Sleuth

Visually, The Northman is stunning, with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke boosting the film’s color palette with variations on light, shadow, and striking gray tones. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Blaschke’s cinematography is also noteworthy for its approach to instances of grace, coating them in either dazzling moonlight or the fantastical color palette of the northern lights. – Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist

Your jaw is so often left gaping in awe from its stunning cinematography and in terror from its ferocity to the point you might just resign yourself to keeping it open for the duration of the film. – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

The Northman’ s landscape imagery feels like a step down for a filmmaker who once seemed intent on imbuing his settings with an unnerving sense of character. – Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine

Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy in The Northman (2022)

Are there any major problems?

Fissures do present themselves — not least of all a recurring CG-heavy vision of a family tree that plays like unnecessary connect-the-dots material to appease a wider audience. – Jordan Raup, The Film Stage

It’s somewhat disappointing that The Northman reveals itself to be so programmatic… Eggers’s film is sometimes frustratingly shackled to the obligations of plot. – Mark Hanson, Slant Magazine

The Northman lacks a sense of nuance in its characters and in its story… It barely scratches the surface of its story, leaving the audience with crumbs rather than a full feast. – Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Every character has a chance to shine individually. However, sometimes the relationships between them are a tad underbaked. – Jeff Nelson, Showbiz Cheat Sheet

The Scandinavian accents coming out of the mouths of actors like Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke risk bringing on a House of Gucci trauma relapse. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The pacing has a rocky start. – Catalina Combs, Black Girl Nerds

Is this the kind of alternative blockbuster we need right now?

What Eggers has ambitiously crafted lands as an invigorating beacon for an industry in need of studio fare with substantial ideas and artistry. – Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist

The film makes you appreciate how seldom we get to see a big, noisy, brawling spectacle these days that’s grounded not in comic-book superheroes and villains but in culturally specific history. – David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The simple fact that financiers had the chutzpah to bankroll such a big swing in the face of our blockbuster-or-bust theatrical climate would have felt like a (pyrrhic) victory against the forces of corporate homogenization, no matter who was behind the camera. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

In a wide release landscape of easy-to-please, vaporous entertainment, such feats should be celebrated. – Jordan Raup, The Film Stage

It’s a big risk to spend that much cash on an auteur-driven historical epic at a time when historical epics have largely fallen by the wayside. But what a beautiful risk it is. I call upon Odin: may The Northman make a billion dollars. – Clarisse Loughrey, Independent

The Northman opens in theaters on April 22, 2022.

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Review: Robert Eggers’ mighty Viking epic ‘The Northman’ puts the art before the Norse

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Not long into Robert Eggers’ “The Northman,” a mad and mesmerizing song of Iceland and fire, the camera plunges down into darkness, as if it had suddenly been swallowed up by the Earth. It’s AD 895, on a frigid North Atlantic island, and we’re following a scrawny young Viking prince, Amleth (Oscar Novak), and his scraggly bearded father, King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke), as they descend into a firelit temple, where the royal stripling is led through a muddy, bloody rite of manhood. Amid much growling, howling, floating and farting, Aurvandil predicts his own impending demise and makes Amleth vow to avenge him — an oath sealed in blood and destined to be fulfilled with great geysers of gore and lava.

There are many such grim prophecies and elemental eruptions in “The Northman,” starting with the movie’s arresting opening shot of a volcano belching smoke, fire and voice-over. (I didn’t catch every word, but the volcano might as well be saying, “Behold. Cinema.”) Aurvandil’s fatalistic vision will soon be proved correct: After returning home from distant battlefields, the king is brutally slain by his brother, Fjölnir (Claes Bang, “The Square” ). Amleth, having witnessed his uncle’s betrayal, barely escapes alive but vows to return and avenge his father, as promised, and save his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), whom Fjölnir has taken as his wife. And return he will decades later, now played by a strapping, towering Alexander Skarsgård in full-blown Old Norse berserker mode, who tears into this role like a man — and an actor — seizing hold of his destiny.

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If you sense some mimicry in this madness, well spotted: The legend of Prince Amleth was the direct inspiration for “Hamlet,” though Skarsgård’s mighty warrior also hails from a cinematic pantheon of vengeance seekers broad enough to include Conan the Barbarian , Maximus and Inigo Montoya . If that makes “The Northman” sound derivative, it is: a witchy brew of Old Norse mythology, Hollywood pageantry and proto-Shakespearean revenge epic.

But Skarsgård (also one of the movie’s producers) has found an ideal collaborator in Eggers, a director sufficiently steeped in film history to know the difference between inspiration and imitation. Like his memorable period freakouts “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” though on a vastly more ambitious scale, “The Northman” is both a dazzling display of film craft and a sly retooling of genre, a movie that delights in fulfilling certain conventions while turning others on their artfully severed heads.

***EXCLUSIVE Do Not Use prior to March 25,2022*** Actor Alexander Skarsgård along with cast and crew members on the set of Robert Eggers’ Viking epic, THE NORTHMAN, a Focus Features release. Credit: Aidan Monaghan / © 2022 Focus Features, LLC

Robert Eggers knew he’d have to fight for his vision of ‘The Northman.’ The result was worth it

Robert Eggers makes his most ambitious film yet with Viking saga ‘The Northman,’ combining historical accuracy with a fantasy mysticism.

April 22, 2022

And so while it’s clear enough how Amleth’s story will end, the long arc of his journey takes unpredictable, even unsettling turns. When we first meet Skarsgård’s fully grown Amleth, he’s joined a band of murderous marauders, clad in wolf skins as they bring a Slavic village to its knees. Eggers, shooting nearly every scene in fluid, intricately choreographed long takes, gives the action the deliberation and intensity of an ancient ritual. (The sweepingly immersive cinematography is by Jarin Blaschke, the spare, purposeful editing by Louise Ford.) This violence is the way of the world, the movie suggests, and the atrocities we’re witnessing — a burning hut evokes the wartime conflagrations of Elem Klimov’s “Come and See” — are as unexceptional as they are unbearable.

Amleth, courting and thwarting our sympathies at will, is a very strong link in an endless chain of death. (He’s not alone, to judge by an end-credits crawl loaded with names like “Hrólfur Split-Lip” and “Thórfinnr Tooth-Gnasher.”) As Amleth goes on his latest feral rampage, you can’t help but wonder about how many children he’s orphaning and how many spinoff revenge dramas he’s setting in motion.

And Skarsgård, a charmer with an undercurrent of aloofness, is perfectly cast as a warrior so numb to carnage that it takes a supernatural intervention to remind him of his sworn mission: Fjölnir, Amleth learns, has been dethroned and fled with Gudrún and his sons to Iceland. It’s only fitting that this news is delivered by a witchy seeress played by Iceland’s biggest star, Björk, resplendent in oracular blue lighting and a Cher-worthy seashell-ringed headdress.

Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy in “The Northman.”

Björk is one of two prominent Icelandic talents pressed into service here. The other is poet and novelist Sjón, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eggers (and who supplied lyrics for Björk’s last major movie, 2000’s “Dancer in the Dark” ). Their involvement speaks to Eggers’ characteristic insistence on verisimilitude, born of an obsessive, research-driven approach to filmmaking that might seem persnickety if it weren’t so passionate. A production and costume designer before he turned to directing, Eggers has become our great builder of worlds in extremis: After the spooky Puritan New England of “The Witch” and the lonely maritime outpost of “The Lighthouse,” he once again conjures a nightmarish vision of humanity on the precipice.

But despite the fastidiousness of “The Northman’s” animal-pelts-and-chain-mail aesthetic, the filmmaking feels freer, looser and nuttier this time around — and not just because the spotty visual record of ancient Viking culture leaves plenty to an artist’s imagination. (The director’s splendid regular collaborators include production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Linda Muir.) Happily, Eggers makes movies, not research papers, and his sweet spot is that zone where his art-film idiosyncrasies merge with a genuine flair for Hollywood showmanship. Witness the self-consciously florid dialogue, sometimes poetically heightened to the point of torture. Witness too the inspired scenery chewing and quasi-Scandinavian accents indulged by Hawke (gone too soon) and especially Kidman, whose performance as the seemingly demure Gudrún turns out to be one of the movie’s most deliciously barbed surprises.

You may recall that Skarsgård and Kidman play a troubled couple in the HBO miniseries “Big Little Lies,” an association that gives Amleth and Gudrún’s eventual scenes together that much more of a feverish Oedipal charge. But Eggers is in no mood to hasten the family reunions and revelations, or to blow his protagonist’s cover. Amleth arrives on Fjölnir’s farm a slave, having stowed away in a boat full of war prisoners, and he’s wily enough to pass himself off for a while as a hard worker and seemingly loyal family servant. He and an enslaved ally, Olga (a fine Anya Taylor-Joy, reteaming with Eggers after “The Witch”), bide their time and share their bodies and secrets, laying the groundwork for a campaign of deadly sabotage against Fjölnir’s household.

Those schemes, when they come to pass, are initially attributed to the work of evil spirits. And while Amleth will eventually take his rightful credit as the author of Fjölnir’s pain, the spirit world — the raw material of the Icelandic myths that are this story’s lifeblood — is of supreme importance here. Eggers, plunging headlong into his material, draws no distinction between fantasy and reality, though as a storyteller, he is naturally inclined toward an ardent defense of paganism in all its forms. Just as “The Witch” critiqued 17th-century Puritan repression with a gleeful embrace of nude bonfire-dancing devilry, so “The Northman,” with its ominous ravens, bearded he-witches and helmeted Valkyries, treats Viking mythology as its own living, breathing, dazzling reality.

You may find yourself longing for more of that fantasy, perhaps as a distraction from the inexorable death march that Amleth’s journey is destined to become. Eggers, who likes to conjure elaborate visions only to attack their foundations from within, works hard to inflect that journey with a self-critical spirit. There’s a productive tension at the heart of “The Northman,” a tug-of-war between the Hollywood revenge-epic tradition from which it superficially hails and the sharper, more subversive dismantling of simplistic payback fantasies it wants to be.

The final passages are laced with surprises you may or may not see coming, bitter reversals of perspective that complicate — but don’t entirely mitigate — the pleasures of watching a wronged man settle an old score. Bang makes Fjölnir an implacable brute, but not an unsympathetic one. The same is true of Skarsgård, whose career-igniting role on “True Blood,” a vampire with Viking roots and the name of Eric Northman, feels like both a sequel and a warm-up act to this one. Amleth may be no unblemished hero, but with a bulging, blood-caked torso and a willingness to storm the gates of hell, he can still lead you on a trek straight to cinematic Valhalla.

‘The Northman’

Rating: R, for strong bloody violence, some sexual content and nudity Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Playing: Starts April 22 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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User reviews

The Northman

A young Viking prince is on a quest to avenge his father's murder. A young Viking prince is on a quest to avenge his father's murder. A young Viking prince is on a quest to avenge his father's murder.

Robert Eggers
Alexander Skarsgård
Nicole Kidman
2.3K User reviews
376 Critic reviews
82 Metascore
6 wins & 65 nominations

Queen Gudrún

Fjölnir the Brotherless

King Aurvandil War-Raven

Olga of the Birch Forest

Thórir the Proud

Heimir the Fool

Hallgrímr Half-Troll

Finnr the Nose-Stub

Áshildur Hofgythja

Hersveinn Battle Hard
Hjalti Battle Hasty

Young Amleth

Hallur Freymundur

The Mound Dweller
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia In the scene in which the Úlfhéðnar attack the Slavic town, Amleth catches a spear in midair and throws it back at the Slavs in one movement. This is taken from the medieval Icelandic story of Njáls saga in which Audolf throws a spear at the Viking hero Gunnar, but Gunnar catches it in midair and throws it straight through Audolf and his shield.
Goofs The runic inscription of "Amleth's Saga" is written incorrectly in the movie version as opposed to the trailer of The Northman where it is correct. The title shown in the trailer written with runes can be translated to "amluthasaka" or amlóða saga, amleth's saga. However at the end of the actual movie the title is missing the rune of "a" from its word saga, making it read akin to "Amleth's sga".

Young Amleth : I will avenge you, Father! I will save you, Mother! I will kill you, Fjölnir!

Crazy credits The film title and the intertitles appear in ancient Norse runes.
Connections Featured in The Critical Drinker: The Northman - We Need More Movies Like This (2022)

User reviews 2.3K

Apr 12, 2022
How long is The Northman? Powered by Alexa
Will composer Mark Korven reunite with Robert Eggers to compose the score for this Viking epic?
April 22, 2022 (United States)
United States
United Kingdom
Official Focus Features
Chiến Binh Phương Bắc
Hekla, Rangárvallasýsla, Iceland
New Regency Productions
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$70,000,000 (estimated)
$34,233,110
$12,290,800
Apr 24, 2022
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Alexander skarsgard and nicole kidman in robert eggers’ ‘the northman’: film review.

Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke also star in this big, bloody medieval Viking saga of fate, family and revenge.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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It’s been a while since we’ve had an all-out blood-and-guts battle orgy in which warriors outfitted in sackcloth and animal skins hurl themselves into the fray, wielding swords and blazing torches, shields, hatchets and daggers, while bellowing dialogue that mostly begins and ends with “RAAARRRGGGHHH!” There’s a lot of that in The Northman , a brawny fever dream which makes the freaky artisanal horror that put director Robert Eggers on the map — The Witch and The Lighthouse — look like Disney movies. To use a term from a ritualistic fireside chant where Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth blurs the line between man and beast, this is the untamed “berserker” of Norse legends.

The Northman

Release date : Friday, April 22 Cast : Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Björk Director : Robert Eggers Screenwriters : Sjón, Robert Eggers

The inadvertently campy dialogue in the script Eggers co-wrote with Icelandic novelist and poet Sjón ( Lamb ) quite often prompts giggles, and the Scandinavian accents coming out of the mouths of actors like Nicole Kidman , Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke risk bringing on a House of Gucci trauma relapse. It’s an audaciously bonkers movie that keeps threatening to careen off into some kind of weird no man’s land where Game of Thrones meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail . And that’s even before Björk drops by as a witchy seeress, outfitted in wicker work, seashells and beads.

But The Northman ’s marauding energy holds you hostage and Prince Amleth is the hunky, heroically vengeful killing machine with a heart that Skarsgård was born to play. Longtime fans will get a kick out of him tapping into the cultural roots of his ancient True Blood vampire, Eric Northman, too.

The screenplay draws from both Norse myths and Icelandic family sagas, building on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet . The prologue takes place in the fictitious North Atlantic island kingdom of Hrafnsey, where King Aurvandil (Hawke), aka War-Raven, arrives home to much fanfare. The gash in his guts inflicted by a foe in battle prompts him to prepare the 10-year-old Amleth (Oscar Novak) to take over the throne, despite the objections of Queen Gudrún (Kidman) that their son is just a boy. Amleth’s transcendental initiation involves crawling around on all fours underground with his father, howling like wolves. Also, belching, farting, levitating and accessing disturbing visions via Aurvandil’s wound.

No sooner has Amleth sworn to avenge his father should he die by an enemy’s sword than the boy witnesses his murder at the hands of his uncle Fjölnir ( Claes Bang ), whose friskiness with the Queen has already been joked about by the shamanistic court fool, Heimir (Willem Dafoe).

“Bring me the boy’s head,” Fjölnir commands his men, accompanied by the shrieking strings and pounding drums of Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough’s hard-driving score. But Amleth, after watching the slaughter of male villagers, abduction of the women and the Queen slung over Fjölnir’s shoulder and hauled off screaming, escapes by boat. He vows to rescue his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.

A couple decades later, Amleth has transformed into a muscle-bound man harnessing the spirit of both a wolf and a bear. He’s rage personified, traveling the Land of the Rus with a pack of Viking raiders that seemingly never met a Slavic settlement they couldn’t plunder. But Björk’s earth-mother seeress recognizes him as the lost prince and reminds him of his fate. Learning that Fjölnir was driven from the kingdom he usurped and fled to a remote agrarian community in Iceland, Amleth boards a slave ship headed there to supply labor.

Anya Taylor-Joy plays a fellow passenger who knows a good hook-up when she sees one. “I am Olga of the Birch Forest,” she says by way of introduction, adding that while he has the strength to break men’s bones, she has the cunning to break their minds. Both get taken on at Fjölnir’s farm, where Olga gradually gains Amleth’s trust and he reveals his plan to murder his uncle and save his mother, whom he believes is only feigning love for her abductor for the sake of their young son (Elliott Rose).

Eggers’ films have shared a fascination with the magical properties of animals — a goat in The Witch (love you, Black Phillip), a cursed seagull in The Lighthouse . The occult fauna this time is wolf cubs and ravens, the former leading Amleth to find a massive sword of the undead, known as The Night Blade; the latter getting busy with their beaks when he’s tortured and bound late in the game.

The storytelling accelerates as Amleth gets closer to his goal, wreaking carnage among his uncle’s men and sparking fear of a “distempered spirit” in their midst. The plotting becomes more frenetic though remains lucid, even if there are one or two arch moments that had me almost howling like a wolf.

Gudrún’s reunion with the son she long believed to be dead should have been a moment of high drama. But it’s hard not to laugh when Kidman, wearing Daryl Hannah’s old crimped hair from Splash and sporting a Natasha Fatale accent, greets a mighty silver blade at her throat with, “Your sword is long,” before engaging in some incestuous flirtation. When Fjölnir suffers a grievous loss and screams, “What evil is this?!” Gudrún shoots him a wide-eyed death stare and snaps, “Behave!” like she’s a Nordic Austin Powers.

The romance between Amleth and Olga also has time to blossom during all this, complete with a post-coital respite in the woods right out of John Boorman’s Excalibur . There’s also an interlude on a flying horse ridden by a fiery-eyed Valkyrie (Ineta Sliuzaite). But even as Amleth ensures the continuation of his bloodline, his deathly appointment with uncle Fjölnir at “the gates of hell” remains.

That would be the mouth of an active volcano, where they fight nude, as any self-respecting medieval warrior would, though their digitally erased penises make them look distractingly like Ken dolls. I could be wrong, but their smooth groins in the lava light look more like the result of studio interference than prudishness on the part of the actors or of a director so intent on presenting a world suspended between life and legend in all its gritty glory.

The film is shot by Eggers’ regular DP Jarin Blaschke, with restless propulsion and with a textured feel for the dramatic landscapes, lashed by rain, wind, snow and ice, or coated with mud and ash. The choreography of the combat scenes — both the staging and the shooting, in long, unbroken takes — is mind-blowing. Also fully enveloping is the dense sound design, with Viking Age instruments like the birch horn and bone flute heard alongside the thundering elements and the chaos of fighting.

The Northman is certainly a lot of movie, and while its hysterical intensity at times veers into overwrought silliness, it’s both unstinting and exhilarating in its depiction of a culture ruled by the cycles of violence. The cohesion of Eggers’ vision commands admiration, as does the commitment of his collaborators, both in front of and behind the camera.

Skarsgård, who has been working for more than a decade to develop a film project rooted in his childhood love of Viking myth and lore, has never been fiercer or more physically imposing. Taylor-Joy, who got her start in The Witch , is beguiling as Olga weaves baskets and plots havoc. (Her parents from that earlier film, Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson, also make appearances.) Kidman is a hoot, juggling fire and ice in an enjoyably over-the-top turn. And if someone doesn’t cast Bang as a Bond nemesis or some other suitably elevated evildoer soon, then Hollywood just isn’t paying attention.

Whether you buy into Eggers’ insane epic, get high on its blood-drenched sorcery or roll your eyes at its excesses, the film makes you appreciate how seldom we get to see a big, noisy, brawling spectacle these days that’s grounded not in comic-book superheroes and villains but in culturally specific history. In other words, a work of bold imagination, not another offshoot of a familiar IP. That alone deserves respect.

Full credits

Distribution: Focus Features Production companies: New Regency, Square Peg Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Björk, Gustav Lindh, Elliott Rose, Oscar Novak, Kate Dickie, Ralph Ineson, Phill Martin, Eldar Skar, Olwen Fouéré, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ineta Sliuzaite Director: Robert Eggers Screenwriters: Sjón, Robert Eggers Producers: Lars Knudsen, Mark Huffam, Robert Eggers, Alexander Skarsgård, Arnon Milchan Executive producers: Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaeffer, Sam Hanson, Thomas Benski Director of photography: Jarin Blaschke Production designer: Craig Lathrop Costume designer: Linda Muir Music: Robin Carolan, Sebastian Gainsborough Editor: Louise Ford

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The Northman Review

A viking revenge film made of stunning visions, but not enough flesh and blood..

The Northman will hit theaters on April 22, 2022.

Two movies are at war within The Northman, the latest film from The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers. The first is a fascinating, trance-like sensory experience that envelops you in the first half hour. The second is a historical revenge saga that feels much more straightforward — in its presentation, rather than in what actually unfolds — while also feeling hesitant in its depictions of violence and sensuality. Despite veering between these two modes of expression (one much more effective than the other), Eggers’ film still ends up on the right side of enjoyable, especially when taking into account that major Hollywood studios (in this case, Universal and its subsidiary Focus Features) so rarely distribute this kind of story — even the relatively neutered version that ends up on screen.

The tale, on paper, is a simple one. After witnessing his father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), being betrayed and murdered by his ruthless uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), the Viking warrior prince Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) returns many years later, in the guise of a slave, to quench his thirst for revenge and to rescue his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman). However, The Northman works best when plot momentum is an afterthought, and when it luxuriates in the smoky, shadowy atmosphere created by Eggers and his collaborators. Fjölnir’s betrayal, rather than a mere detail nestled a truncated prologue, arrives instead at the tail-end of a lengthy section (one of several chapters with its own on-screen title), in which the characters are established in broad strokes, in which a young Amleth (played by Oscar Novak) is initiated into his royal lineage, and in which the film’s themes of premonition and destiny come rushing to the fore.

The Northman - Exclusive IGN FanFest Images

Ethan Hawke plays King Aurvandil in Robert Eggers' The Northman.

The music, by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough, is absolutely key, veering between folk-like strings that evoke King Aurvandill’s regality as he returns from war, and percussions so heavy — during murkier and more spiritual segments — that with the right theatrical sound system, the bass is sure to rattle your ribcage. An early scene, featuring Willem Dafoe in his all-too-brief appearance as a jester-like shaman, sees both Aurvandill and Amleth embodying hounds as they traipse around a fire on all fours, howling as they tap into animalistic instincts that exists side-by-side with vivid hallucinations of their distinguished ancestors. It’s just one of several such sequences where Carolan and Gainsborough’s thundering score might make you want to beat your chest and join in with an on-screen ritual (it certainly helps that Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography, awash in deep shadows and flickering flames, is just as eerie as it is inviting).

That sense of ritualism permeates the rest of the story. As a young Amleth escapes his uncle’s clutches, he begins repeating the phrase “I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir” to himself over and over again, even as an adult, until it becomes a holy mantra. This mission, however, ends up becoming morally complicated thanks to certain surprising specifics as the story unfolds. By the time these complications arise, the very notion of bloodshed — seemingly righteous bloodshed, in particular — takes on a spiritual bent. As various moon-lit visions compel Amleth to retrieve a mythical saber for his quest, the long and vengeful path laid out before him becomes entwined with the notions of royal destiny in the film’s early stages, and before long, even violence becomes its own form of twisted ritual.

What's your favorite movie about vikings?

While The Northman’s magnificent, dream-like sequences feel plucked out of time, its more traditional scenes in the back half tend to struggle. They don’t take up too much of the initial 30 minutes, but once the plot is set in motion, and the adult Amleth begins his journey — after much time spent as a violent plunderer, amongst a group of raiders who mold themselves after wolves and bears, leading to even more inviting scenes of primal revelry — the film then begins to settle into a more standard Hollywood narrative. This isn’t inherently a problem, especially since the romantic element it introduces also features a mystical bent (Anya Taylor-Joy plays Olga, a fellow slave whose beliefs in the occult, and whose prayers invoking natural forces, pair well with Amleth’s bloodthirsty disposition). However, when the story starts presenting less through shadows, music, body-language, and dreams, and more through dialogue, the film’s weaknesses as classical drama begin to pile up. Across the nearly 140-minute runtime, too many exchanges feel hastily assembled and poorly constructed, with little thought for relationships or rhythm.

Eggers is at his best when he bucks tradition, like when he dislodges his camera from moments of standard, over-the-shoulder coverage, and opts instead to move in to isolated close-ups where the characters practically address the audience (it often feels, in these moments, like they’re peering into their own souls as the camera floats towards them). In contrast, the blocking when characters exchange words feels stilted, with an eye towards plot-function rather than feeling, and the rote cuts that follow them line by line feel distinctly uninspired. There isn’t always something off-kilter about the construction of these scenes, but for a film whose most impactful moments play like haunting vignettes from early silent cinema (perhaps even more so than Eggers’ 4:3 black-and-white production The Lighthouse), the frequent returns to editing for continuity, and staging for dialogue in a plainly logistical sense, suck the air out of the room.

Some of these more traditional moments unfold in long takes, and they largely manage to hold attention, but when they’re deployed for action scenes, the film’s shortcomings as a specifically Hollywood production also become apparent. The Northman has plenty of viciousness unfolding in its margins, especially as a tale whose “hero” is just as merciless as its villains. But too many of these instances feel bloodless, despite the frequent stabbings and dismemberments; so much of the violence is implied, just off-screen, but little of it is felt. The film’s nudity and sexuality feel just as dulled. In either case, the camera captures bodies at their most vulnerable — whether in moments of passion or bloodshed — but only briefly, before cutting away.

It's a good thing the performances manage to reflect at least some of these ideas, concerned with the line between violence and passion, even if The Northman hesitates to ruminate on them in a meaningful aesthetic sense. Skarsgård, for instance, feels genuinely torn between his divinely inspired plans for vengeance and his newfound lust and affection for Olga. Bang, meanwhile, is simultaneously the most muted performer and the most alluring, using his silence to introduce hidden, thoughtful layers to Fjölnir that only serve to complicate Amleth’s single-minded ambition. Kidman especially keeps the film afloat when it leaves the more ethereal scenes behind, and she’s even at the center of the rare dialogue exchange that feels genuinely visceral and nauseating, as she taps into some delightfully unsettling instincts. And of course, mention must be made of Fjölnir’s indignant heir Thórir (Gustav Lindh), a minor character, but one whose detestable presence makes him the most punchable cinematic fail-son since Iosef in John Wick.

Despite its less effective elements growing increasingly prominent, The Northman maintains a sense of possibility, and unpredictability, thanks to the spiritual notions at its core. Whatever Amleth learns or unlearns, or experiences in the flesh — whatever gentleness compels him, on a human level, to veer from his vengeful path — sits right alongside his mad visions of glory, and his desire to fulfill a self-destructive destiny in a way that ultimately makes The Northman a tragedy. It is, however, a particularly picturesque tragedy that, in its most effective moments, sweeps you up in pulsating fire-side customs awash in beating drums that emanate as if from Valhalla itself. That’s worth occasionally tolerating scenes that feel run-of-the-mill by comparison.

Robert Eggers’ viking revenge saga The Northman works best when it dives head-first into dreams and disorienting visions, but it slows down when it becomes a more traditional Hollywood narrative. With viciousness relegated to its margins, it often feels neutered and bloodless, but still ends up on the right side of entertaining thanks to its pulsating music and measured performances.

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Robert Eggers likes to explore the uncertainty of horrifying situations, whether through religion and doubt in 2015’s The Witch , or questioning one’s own sanity in 2019’s The Lighthouse . Eggers told both of these stories on a relatively small scale, mostly limited to a secluded house on the edge of the woods, or a claustrophobic lighthouse so small that even the lead character hits his head on the film’s aspect ratio. These confines have helped make Eggers such an effective filmmaker, and turned him into an orchestrator of these small-scale nightmares. Yet while witches and mermaids—as well as the fear of the world not making sense anymore—have plagued the characters in Eggers’ films, it’s that uncertainty that creeps in and gets under his character’s skins that makes Eggers’ first two films stories that are hard to shake long after they’re over.

Eggers’ third film, The Northman , however, gives the director a much larger canvas to explore, an expansive and grander vision that we’ve ever seen Eggers try to tackle before, but with that uncertainty still in tact and just as effective as ever. Co-written by Eggers and Sjón , The Northman follows the Viking warrior prince Amleth ( Alexander Skarsgård ) on his journey for vengeance. As a child, Amleth saw his father, King Aurvandill ( Ethan Hawke ), murdered by his uncle Fjölnir ( Claes Bang ). After witnessing the slaying of his father, Amleth swore to avenge his father, save his mother, Queen Gudrún ( Nicole Kidman )—who was kidnapped by Fjölnir’s men—and kill Fjölnir.

The Northman at first feels distinctly like Eggers’ work in its strangeness, be it through characters like Willem Dafoe ’s Heimir the Fool, or the unsettling nature of the time, when royalty can become slaves at any moment, and violence seems around every corner. But as The Northman progresses, Eggers’ penchant for uncertainty once again seeps into his story, as Amleth’s quest for revenge becomes full of skepticism. Yet in this uncertainty comes Eggers’ most focused theme to date, as Eggers and Sjón explore how evil begets evil, and how even the most black-and-white scenarios are full of gray. The Northman ultimately becomes a story about embracing love, compassion, and forgiveness, or falling to the more base desires of retribution.

RELATED: First 'The Northman' Social Reactions Call It Brutal, Ambitious, and Robert Eggers' Best Movie Yet

Like all of Eggers’ work, The Northman has an inherent haunting quality to it. When we first see the adult Amleth, he’s more of an animal than a man. As Amleth and his team murder and pillage their way through a small village, Skarsgård almost presents himself like a beast, with hunched shoulders and a determination to kill anything that gets in his way. Even if at this early point, Amleth has tried to ignore his royal lineage, we can see the deep-seated rage that has lived in this man for decades. Eggers shoots this invasion almost like a combination between a horror film and Elem Klimov ’s terrifying anti-war film, Come and See . Eggers shows our protagonist as an adult, then immediately reveals that his actions since we last saw him have been as bad—if not worse—than the actions of his murdering uncle.

Based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, who was William Shakespeare ’s inspiration for Hamlet, The Northman isn’t exactly reinventing the Viking story, but instead, taking familiar elements and making them feel shocking and new through Eggers’ camera. As Amleth continues towards his goal, Eggers, along with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke —who has shot Eggers’ previous features—amp up the terrors. The anger starts to overcome Amleth, and we can see this through the wake he leaves behind him. Again, Eggers and Sjón aren’t necessarily doing much groundbreaking narratively, yet the determination to show the dread and panic of that period and in such a situation makes The Northman one of the more staggering Viking tales in recent memory.

Another key element that makes Eggers’ films so outstanding is capturing fantastic performances amongst his terrors, and that certainly remains true in The Northman . Skarsgård is remarkable as Amleth, showing the audience exactly what this character is thinking through nothing more than his sheer physicality. It’s almost as if Skarsgård is playing Amleth as a werewolf, transforming when the desire for blood becomes too much to bear. Balancing out Amleth’s fury is Olga ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), a sorceress who helps Amleth on his goal. As Olga says early on, Amleth can break men’s bodies, but she can break men’s minds, and similar to Amleth, we can see when Olga’s rage gets the better of her through the way she presents herself. Skarsgård and Taylor-Joy are tremendous together, a pairing that both needed, lest they succumb fully to the anger that rages inside them.

Alexander Skarsgard and Anya Taylor-Joy The Northman social

Beyond this pair, The Northman is packed with phenomenal performances, most of which are seen through the unreliable viewpoint of Amleth. Particularly brilliant are Kidman and Bang, in roles that almost require a second viewing to appreciate fully. Bang as Fjölnir is giving a quiet, reserved performance that shows a man trying to do the best with what he has left, whereas Kidman also plays Queen Gudrún with restraint, but Kidman’s opportunity to go all-in with the resentment within this character is one of The Northman ’s best scenes.

Yet, if there’s one thing The Northman is missing from the rest of Eggers’ oeuvre, it is that lack of madness that made parts of The Witch and The Lighthouse almost feel like a catharsis. By the end of The Witch , Eggers provided that moment of embracing the hysteria of this situation, while The Lighthouse almost made an entire film around this feeling. But that part of Eggers’ sensibility is mostly absent here, occasionally popping up during The Northman ’s most fantastical moments. It’s not a damning absence, but it does feel like The Northman could’ve integrated that insanity a bit more into this tale as well.

But mostly, it’s exciting to see Eggers working on this scale and thriving. Eggers’ style and striking imagery work beautifully within a story this sweeping and grandiose, and even on a larger scale, Eggers can still craft a film that feels oppressive in just the right ways. While this is Eggers’ least horror-centric story, he still utilizes many of the same techniques to engross the audience in the foreboding that this period must have induced in the people of that time. There are few filmmakers that can make the leap from smaller, insular stories into large-scale epics, but with The Northman , Eggers has proved that his style and substance can remain intact, regardless of the size of the story.

The Northman opens in theaters on April 22.

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The Northman review: Fear the reaper, when he is Skarsgård

Indie filmmaker Robert Eggers (The Witch) makes a play for the multiplex in his starry, bloody Viking epic.

Recently, a small ripple ran through social media when a series of posters for The Northman materialized in New York City subways with the title missing , a printing error that the internet reacted to with predictable glee. Some made quick work of Photoshop , slapping on winky stand-ins ( Tarzan , Finding Nemo 3 ); others tried more sincerely to provide their own loglines ("Like Waterworld 2 or something. Post-apocalyptic, but it's tribal." "Vikings? Vikings who are going through a really tough time.")

The Northman (in theaters April 22) is in fact a tough time for Vikings, though it's arguable whether they ever had any other kind. It is also, beneath the arthouse sheen of A24 and the raft of prestige weirdos — Anya Taylor-Joy , Willem Dafoe , Björk — on board, a fairly straightforward genre movie: A blood-soaked revenge saga somewhere between Clint Eastwood, Conan the Barbarian , and The Clan of the Cave Bear , with a heady glaze of metaphysical fantasy.

That it was made by writer-director Robert Eggers , who also helmed the 2015 Sundance fever dream The Witch and 2019's surreal sea-shanty chamber piece The Lighthouse , is less expected, though his imprint is all over the film — in its grand monologues and strange mythologies, the baroque, uncanny sense of world-building. What's less clear this time is whether any of it means anything, or is even really supposed to.

Alexander Skarsgård at least seems born to play Amleth, the deposed ninth-century warrior-prince whose betrayal as a child at the hands of his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang) leaves him shorn of both his parents ( Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke ) and his North Atlantic kingdom. Conscripted into a roving band of mercenaries who storm villages, leaving scorch marks and pillage in their wake, his purpose hardens, "a freezing river of hate." And news that his usurper still lives — now an exile himself, somewhere in Iceland — offers the cosmic chance at retribution he's spent years preparing for. To reach Fjölnir, he'll need to draft himself onto a slave ship with other chattel of war, though he isn't the only one there with no plans to surrender; Taylor-Joy's ferocious, flaxen-haired concubine Olga has, she tells him serenely, her own powers of persuasion beyond the sword.

The Northman is by far Eggers' biggest film in both scope and budget, and it looks it: a sprawling summit-of-the-gods epic shot through with rich, hallucinatory set pieces, and movie stars in wild Pagan wiggery. Skarsgård, deltoids rippling, infers the damaged soul beneath his marauding slaughter-wolf, and a restless volcano lords over them all, burbling witness to the rivers of blood and ritual chaos below. In all that, the script, by Eggers and Icelandic screenwriter Sjón ( Lamb ), serves mostly as bare scaffolding for the film's ravishing vistas and flamboyant violence, neither profound nor particularly important. Beneath the runes and visions, it's a tale as old as Game of Thrones , and as simple as a story told around a campfire: a ride of the Valkyries spelled out in gore and popcorn. Grade: B

‘The Northman’: A Brutal, Bloody, Kinda Bonkers Tale of Viking-on-Viking Crime

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

The Northman , Robert Eggers’ biggest and most expansive (and expensive) feature to date, is also his best so far. It’s an oft-stunning visual feast and an entertaining peek into Eggers’ instincts as a choreographer not only of historical detail but of bloody action. It is also an instructive example of how the most visionary intentions can’t always enliven an otherwise rote story. The Northman opens in AD 895, when Amleth, the Northman of the title, is a boy (played at this stage by Oscar Novak). But it is primarily set in 914, during the latter stages of the settlement of Iceland, before the establishment of a parliament. Lawlessness rules the way. Spare us your wild West and give us, instead, your wild, ravenous, revenge-seeking North.

Amleth’s father is King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke), freshly home from battle — and suffering from an injury which, if not a mortal wound, has invited some dark reflection on mortality from Aurvandill’s part. “I watched his innocence tonight,” the warring king says to his wife, Queen Gudrún (an underutilized Nicole Kidman), of their son. It is time to initiate their boy into the ways of being king. So begins the first thrilling ritual we see in this movie. Amleth and Aurvandill crawl down into a cave, joining the fool of the kingdom, Heimir (a zany, senseless Willem Dafoe), in a howling, sputtering ritual of man-making, getting down on all fours like dogs as they inhale hallucinogenic smoke from henbane seeds and recite some of the sayings of Odin (the Hávamál).

Aurvandill’s sudden concern for showing his son the way of the throne in this rite is well-timed. Soon, the king will be betrayed by his brother, Fjölnir (a royally maned Claes Bang); an argument will ensue; Amleth will be rendered into an orphan, his mother into the unwitting queen of the man who’s stealing the kingdom from her son. Fjölnir, we learn, is a “bastard” — not in the line of succession. He also thinks Amleth has been, as they say, taken care of. He’s wrong.

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Only three movies into his feature directing career, Eggers has rightfully earned a reputation for doing his research. The Witch , from 2015, was set in the New England of the 1630s, and seemingly every detail of its presentation, from the library-antique style and rhythm of its dialogue to the painstaking reconstructions of its built environments, sang with his obsessive attention to detail — so much so that it nearly overwhelmed the movie. For The Lighthouse (2019), set in the 1880s, Eggers spent a handsome chunk of the movie’s budget on the construction of an actual, 70-foot tall lighthouse, within and around which he set the movie’s strange, confined story. For that movie, Willem Dafoe had to learn how to knit. None of which is remarkable on its own. Actors acquire practical skills for movies all the time. And James Cameron built a partial model of the Titanic only to sink it. For this level of care to embed itself in our idea of the director, though, is something else — a feat of canny marketing, for one thing.

The Northman is, unabashedly, a revenge tale. Amleth the boy will become Amleth the muscled, scorched-earth man: thwarted Viking royalty who, you’d better believe it, plans to avenge what he lost. Alexander Skarsgård, who once played Tarzan, has done the mean, lean, shirtless warrior thing before. It helps to have an actor who makes the feat of this accomplishment feel plausibly heroic, perceivably vicious. The Northman will see him falling in with a group of Viking-era berserkers, sheathed in the skin of a wolf, before having an encounter with a seeress (a mystically appropriate Björk) who spells out the story of his fate. Fate takes him to Iceland, as an enslaved laborer, and he works his way up into Fjölnir’s confidence through his wits and might. He befriends and falls for Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred in The Witch and here, as there, drums up the sense of uncanny mystery that Eggers needs). Amleth communes with ravens and wolves, wends his way through a series of challenges to his will and his power. The Northman is not a cliffhanger, exactly. You know where the story is going. You can also, from the bare outline of the plot, guess where it came from. Amleth is a historical Viking warrior, described in the 13th-century historian Saxo Grammaticus’ The History of the Danes . Amleth, the name, resembles Hamlet for a reason: Shakespeare was influenced by the violent hero’s story. This movie’s particular chapter isn’t in Grammaticus’ account, however. It’s more so a plausible missing chapter, which Eggers co-wrote with the Icelandic poet Sjón. Still, for a story dreamed up by its makers, it starts to bear some cumbersome familiarity. Even the challenges that fall into Amleth’s path, such as the acquisition of a uniquely powerful sword, are a little deadened by obvious outcomes. Some movies can do this and not suffer for it. Northman ’s cutting depth of detail almost longs for some fresh backbone of a story. The movie’s carefully constructed cliff-top forts and beauteous locales, its dangerous headlands and rolling green hills, are all so fecund — boons to the imagination. Eggers’ movie is best when it feels most complicit in that imagination: When it dives into its mystical visions and unnameable powers. Eggers abandons stylish modern crutches, like handheld cameras during his battle scenes, and instead resorts to smooth, eerie long takes, images that roam through the action, not with a sense of hands-off distance, but rather with a patient eagerness to lap up the sights, soak in the bloodletting. Nighttime scenes set outdoors are spookily drained of color and forced to evoke the wondrous, ominous purity of moonlight.

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The Northman Review

15 Apr 2022

The Northman

No filmmaker in the last 20 years has done folklore quite like Robert Eggers . The Witch and The Lighthouse showcased his skilful ability to transpose the stories of old into celluloid form, without losing the historical, mystical and cultural veracity of their origin, and both have been weird and wacky gifts to behold. Yet these intimate portraits of North American myth are a whole different ballgame compared to the Viking legend of Eggers’ latest cinematic endeavour. To say he’s stepped it up a notch would be an understatement — the man’s smashed it right out of the park.

In an ambitious exploration of Nordic mythology, various gods are worshipped — anyone familiar with Marvel’s take on the Thor franchise will recognise names such as Odin or Freyja — but this is very much the brutal story of man. One man, in particular: Prince Amleth, a beast of a warrior played with feral intensity by Alexander Skarsgård . He stalks across the screen, shoulders hunched forward and carrying the weight of every kill he’s committed since fleeing his home as a cub after witnessing the murder of his father, King Aurvandil ( Ethan Hawke ), by his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), in a power move to take over their kingdom in the North. If this tale feels similar to Hamlet , that’s because Eggers and his co-writer, Icelandic poet Sjón, took inspiration from the same 12th-century Danish story as Shakespeare. But the two have expertly interwoven mystical strands of Icelandic fable into five, multilayered chapters of bombastic drama, steeped in so much familial conflict, barbaric romance and bloodthirsty violence that after two-and-a-half hours, your mind, body and soul might just need an ice bath to recover.

Each vignette of action is articulated with such high-octane precision and depth by cinematographer Jarin Blaschke that no performance is wasted. In one sequence, the camera tracks Amleth roaring into action, sprinting at an encampment as spears and arrows whip past his naked body before he launches onto its high, wooden wall, hauls himself over and, with an axe, meets the heads, necks and backs of several opponents. Later, as he prowls through the village and turns out of shot, we witness the unrelentingly cruel violence visited upon defenceless women and children, before he returns to the frame in murderous fashion. Long takes like these, accompanied by composers Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough’s pulsating score, throbbing with drumbeats and low notes, emphasise the savage spectacle and unforgiving harshness of these times, but also the powerful physicality of Skarsgård.

Skarsgård seems possessed with Old Nordic fire, showing both melancholy and a taste for blood.

The Swedish actor has long wanted to play a Viking, and Eggers has created the perfect environment to truly bring out the berserker within. Whether it’s in the natural light against backdrops of forests, mountains, seas and rivers or behind the veil, on the rich, black-and-white plane of gods, dead kings and valkyries, Skarsgård seems possessed with Old Nordic fire, showing both melancholy and a taste for blood. It’s quite unlike anything he’s done before.

In such a wild historical epic, each actor, in fact, brings a willingness to throw themselves into the madness. Anya Taylor-Joy holds her own as white witch Olga of the Birch Forest, a character who is as radiant as she is resourceful, imbued with quiet confidence and emotional rigour. Hawke and Willem Dafoe — as Heimir the Fool — are riotously primeval in an early rite-of-passage scene; Björk’s seeress is pure magic; and Bang brings dignity and believable lethality to his chief antagonist. Nicole Kidman , meanwhile, is positively chaotic as Amleth’s queen mother, with a role that puts her son’s whole worldview into question. That’s the beauty of this story of heroes and villains, good and evil: it’s all about perspective, and Eggers’ vision of the Old World is one that closes in on the fallacies of men who are willing to kill and die for the sake of legacy, honour and tradition. He takes us on a bloody, merciless voyage across land, sea and otherworlds, culminating with a cathartic third-act battle realised in blazing glory. “Til Valhall!”, indeed.

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The northman, common sense media reviewers.

Powerful, incredibly bloody, vengeance-fueled Viking saga.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Although entire movie is a quest for revenge, the

Characters are mainly seeking violence and revenge

Driving force comes from White males (no notable n

Extremely strong, gory violence. Long, bloody batt

Woman's naked bottom. Several men and women appear

Infrequent use of "bastard," "bitch," "whore," "he

Characters eat a mushroom stew and go on "bad trip

Positive Messages

Although entire movie is a quest for revenge, the story eventually begins to show revenge's downsides: the violence, hate, and cyclical nature of it.

Positive Role Models

Characters are mainly seeking violence and revenge and ways to usurp power or gain control over others. While a lesson is learned, it's too late.

Diverse Representations

Driving force comes from White males (no notable non-White characters), but women have more power and agency here than women used to in movies like this. Women here make their own choices, exert their own power.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely strong, gory violence. Long, bloody battles, fighting, hitting, bashing with weapons, head-butts, etc. Many bloody wounds. Fighters slathered in blood. Characters pierced with arrows, stabbed with swords, impaled with axes. A man rips another man's throat open with his teeth. Throat slicing. Severed heads. Bashed-in faces. Person's nose sliced off; mutilated face. Plucked-out eyes. Mutilated corpses hung from wall. Corpses with hearts carved out. Spilled intestines. Child stabbed (off-screen). Character attacked by dog, dog killed. Horse beheaded. Man stabs himself. Corpses hanging from trees. Naked male corpse. People bound in chains; depictions of slavery. Families are forcibly separated, with screaming young children taken from their parents. Woman hog-tied. Women roughly grabbed. Intense, eerie, nightmarish rituals. Scary stuff: witches, ghosts, the undead. Homes on fire. Vomiting. Incest. Rape is mentioned, and a man tries to have forced sex with an enslaved woman. In a group sex scene, it appears that some men might be forcibly grabbing women.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Woman's naked bottom. Several men and women appear to be having sex during a celebration, with kissing, thrusting, caressing of bottoms, obscured nudity in the shadows, partial bottoms and partial breasts seen, etc. Kissing. Suggestion of incest. Brief shot of a woman dressing, with a gown sliding down over her body. Crude, sex-related humor. Sex-related dialogue. Shirtless males. Naked male corpse. Woman lifts dress to reveal that she's menstruating; brief shot of blood. (Content related to sexual violence is in the "Violence" section.)

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of "bastard," "bitch," "whore," "hell," "swine," "piss."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters eat a mushroom stew and go on "bad trips." Social drinking in taverns.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Northman is a bloody Viking revenge epic starring Nicole Kidman , Alexander Skarsgård , and Anya Taylor-Joy . It's powerfully and expertly made by director Robert Eggers but has intense, mature violence and sexual situations. Expect gory battle scenes; characters being hit with arrows, swords, and axes; a man ripping another man's throat with his teeth; severed heads, mutilated faces, and mutilated corpses; and the suggested deaths of a child, dog, horse, and more. Families are forcibly separated. Several characters appear to have sex -- and some women appear to be forcibly grabbed -- with thrusting, touching, and partial bare bottoms and breasts seen. A man tries to rape an enslaved woman; she deters him by lifting her dress and showing him her menstrual blood. There are other sexual situations and sex-related dialogue, as well as uses of "bastard," "bitch," "whore," "hell," "swine," and "piss." Characters eat a "magic" mushroom stew and go on "bad trips," and there's social drinking in taverns. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

Parents say (3)
Kids say (8)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Definitely not for children or teens

One of the most solid films i have seen in a long time, what's the story.

Loosely inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet , THE NORTHMAN opens in the year 895, with King Aurvandill War-Raven ( Ethan Hawke ) returning home to his wife, Queen Gudrún ( Nicole Kidman ), and young son, Amleth (Oscar Novak), after a long voyage. The king's brother, Fjölnir ( Claes Bang ), arrives and betrays him, assassinating him in a sneak attack. Amleth sees his mother being kidnapped and flees, vowing revenge. Years later, he has become a fearsome Viking ( Alexander Skarsgård ). When Amleth encounters a witch and learns Fjölnir's location, he disguises himself as an enslaved person and boards a ship for Iceland. He meets a healer named Olga ( Anya Taylor-Joy ) and forms an unexpected bond with her. Forced to labor on a remote farm, Amleth meets another witch and is told the location of a magic sword. With the sword, Amleth begins to carry out his revenge, killing Fjölnir's men one by one. But before he battles Fjölnir himself in a fiery showdown, Amleth must face a terrible truth -- and make an impossible decision.

Is It Any Good?

Director Robert Eggers has created a powerful saga full of passion, rage, and dark fantasy. As with his remarkable debut feature The Witch , Eggers seems to have poured a ton of research into The Northman , as well as teaming with veteran Icelandic writer Sjón ( Lamb ) to capture an eerie authenticity. It feels like being transported back in time, rather than watching actors in costumes. Even though there's actually little going on here outside of a revenge plot, the movie has weight to it, something at stake. It feels like it was created by people who take pride in their craft.

Recalling David Lowery's entrancing The Green Knight , The Northman switches with ease from earthy battle sequences slippery with mud and gore to unreal sequences of witches or Valkyries, all belonging to the same world. Yet as he proved with his previous movie, The Lighthouse , Eggers is equally skilled with actors and characters. The performances here are all impressive, but Kidman in particular can be so ferocious and startling that her work may feel like an actual sting. As for the overarching revenge plot, it does take 137 minutes to march toward the inevitable. But once it gets there, it does so with a surprisingly primal, visual palette, and it also manages to show the act as an exhausting, ever spiraling curse without end.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Northman 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How is sex depicted in the movie? Which moments are problematic? Why? Have values changed since the time of the Vikings?

Why do you think Amleth ultimately chose revenge? Why might it have been extremely difficult for him to choose love and healing instead? Why is it difficult for us to pursue things we haven't been exposed to?

What's the appeal of Viking stories? What can we learn from that time and place?

How are women represented in the movie? Do they have their own agency and power?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 22, 2022
On DVD or streaming : May 13, 2022
Cast : Alexander Skarsgard , Anya Taylor-Joy , Nicole Kidman
Director : Robert Eggers
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors
Studio : Focus Features
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Magic and Fantasy
Run time : 137 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong bloody violence, some sexual content and nudity
Last updated : April 1, 2024

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‘The Northman’ Review: Robert Eggers’ Viking Epic Goes So Hard You’ll Feel Like You’ve Died and Gone to Valhalla

David ehrlich.

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All you really need to know about “ The Northman ” — a $90 million Viking revenge saga directed by Robert Eggers — is that every single minute of it feels like a $90 million Viking revenge saga directed by Robert Eggers. Both parts of that equation are worth celebrating outside of and in addition to the movie’s other merits.

Even if “The Northman” had been a dreadful bore — and not a primal, sinewy, gnarly-as-fuck 10th century action epic that starts with a hallucinogenic Viking bar mitzvah, features Björk ’s first narrative film performance since “Dancer in the Dark,” and ends with two mostly naked men fighting to the death atop an erupting volcano — the simple fact that financiers had the chutzpah to bankroll such a big swing in the face of our blockbuster-or-bust theatrical climate would have felt like a (pyrrhic) victory against the forces of corporate homogenization, no matter who was behind the camera.

That “The Northman” was entrusted to a fetishistically uncompromising young auteur whose previous movie was a single-location sea shanty best-remembered for mermaid vaginas and Willem Dafoe asking, “Why’d you spill your beans!?” makes it even riskier to slot into multiplexes between “Sonic 2” and “MCU 28.” That the finished product viscerally feels like the work of the same artist — despite well-documented attempts to water it down — makes it something of a miracle.

And yet, in an environment so neutered by empty spectacle that critics have been conditioned to do Cirque du Soleil-level backflips for anything even slightly less than obvious — an environment in which mild surprises are treated like government secrets, and the shock of the new is such a rare event that we tend to relay it with the breathlessness of a UFO sighting — it’s important to note that “The Northman” isn’t satisfying just because it’s fun to see Eggers’ fingerprints smudged into every frame of such a big movie. It’s also (and more rewardingly) satisfying because the director’s signature handicraft allows “The Northman” to dismantle its modern context and retell a Viking legend with such raw immediacy that its fjords of blood seem freshly spilled for the first time in 1,000 years.

“The Northman” may fall short of being Eggers’ best film (its terse savagery doesn’t leave room for the emotional layering that allowed “The Witch” to burn so dark), but it’s undoubtedly the peak of his continuing effort to return some integrity to the past; to level the playing field between now and then by shooting period folklore with such historic fidelity that we experience it in the present tense. Just as “The Witch” is so unsettling because it renders sin with a Puritan sense of mortal danger, and “The Lighthouse” so febrile because it embodies the isolation of 19th century life on the fringes of sanity, “The Northman” is so grab-you-by-the-throat intense because it renders a Viking prince’s quest for vengeance as though fate were a force as real as the weather.

And that’s exactly how it might have seemed to a Norse warrior in the North Atlantic circa 915 A.D. His priorities displace our own; his moral urgency overpowers whatever “civilized” moral code we try to force onto this ancient story. If “Hamlet” is often reductively (and destructively) summed up as a tragedy about someone who can’t make up their mind, “The Northman” — which is based on the violent legend that inspired Shakespeare’s play — is about someone who never really had a choice.

All things are equal for Prince Amleth (initially seen as a 10-year-old boy played by Oscar Novak), who was born into a world where Valhalla is a place as real as the stony castle where he waits for his father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (a regal yet shifty Ethan Hawke), to return from war. And when he does, Aurvandill decides that it’s time for his son to become a man — a process that involves drinking spiked mead, howling at the moon while Heimir the Fool (Willem Dafoe) dances around them in a frenzy, and then looking upon the ghosts of dead kings that are hanging from Amleth’s family tree. “The Northman” doesn’t slow down to explain why Aurvandill is already among them, since Eggers refuses to make exposition out of anything that his characters might already know, but we get our answer soon enough.

The very next morning, in fact, as Amleth’s hot uncle Fjölnir the Brotherless (Claes Bang) makes good on his name by slaughtering Aurvandill and kidnapping the newly widowed Queen Gudrún ( Nicole Kidman , finding all sorts of wonderfully florid notes in her role as a cunning damsel in distress). Fjölnir’s henchman assures him that Amleth — the rightful heir to the throne — has been drowned at sea, but that’s not entirely accurate. The truth is that Amleth has escaped, and, in the span of a single cut that spans 20 years, will grow up to be a homicidal berserker the size of a small house, “a beast cloaked in manflesh,” who pillages Slavic villages with his pals in order to feed his insatiable appetite for death while he scours the earth for his uncle.

Played by a hulking Alexander Skarsgård , whose human bulldozer of a performance channels the actor’s usual menace in a compellingly ambivalent new direction, adult Amleth is basically what would happen if Tarzan micro-dosed the T-virus from “Resident Evil” every day for two straight decades. A swollen husk of a man who’s literally hunched from the hatred he’s been carrying since he was a child (or maybe that’s just what happens to someone’s posture when their neck muscle looks like a boa constrictor trying to digest a whole poodle), the guy doesn’t even flinch when his buddies arrow down some local peasants for sport. At one point, he catches a javelin from mid-air with his bare hand and hurls it back at the sentry who threw it in one fluid motion; it’s the start of a raid that Eggers choreographs in a brutal yet harrowingly even-keeled long-take, one of several transportive sequence shots that lend physical weight to the inertia of Amleth’s destiny.

And this is a character who moves forward on nothing but the wayward momentum of his own vengeance, which seems to have steered him off-course along the way. What he wants is clear — drink every time Amleth mutters “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir” and you’ll be dead long before he can do any of those things — but the man is little more than a mantra. He doesn’t have any quips or heroic tendencies. He never smiles. The only truly relatable thing about Amleth is that he gets valuable life advice from Björk, who brings raspy perfection to her brief cameo as a magical seeress who shows up to remind the former prince of his path.

His only soft spot is for a slave named Olga of the Birch Forest ( Anya Taylor-Joy , going for a Gaga-like Transylvanian accent that benefits from being in a film of such extreme verisimilitude that even the most ridiculous choices feel right), who Amleth meets after learning that Fjölnir has absconded to Iceland, and deciding to disguise himself as one of his uncle’s newest purchases. And yet even the warmth that she inspires from him feels like a gnawing distraction from the task at hand. Kindness for his kin and hatred for his enemies might not be as mutually exclusive as those paths are first presented to Amleth, but little of the film’s tightly contained second half is spent hemming and hawing over what he will do next. On the contrary, “The Northman” only draws closer to the essence of Amleth’s fate as he ingratiates himself to Fjölnir by day and terrorizes his settlement by night, a cycle that’s segmented with chapter titles (e.g. “The Night Blade Feeds”) that reflect the morbid humor of a film that’s often funny but never in a winking sort of way.

THE NORTHMAN, Alexander Skarsgard, 2022. ph: Aidan Monaghan / © Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection

There are plenty of reasons to laugh during this movie, or at least shake your head in smiling disbelief at the extent of its brutality (brace for a new riff on a human centipede), but the “jokes” don’t foster a sense of ironic detachment so much as they chip away at it. For all of the talk about Eggers’ obsessive attention to historical detail, the right chain mail or piece of embroidery is ultimately in service to the form and perspective of a film that puts you in the mindset of someone who lived by some very different principles.

Co-written by Eggers and the Icelandic poet Sjón, “The Northman” doesn’t appeal to modern notions of manliness or morality so much as it makes literal bloodsport of their limitations. Even when the foundations of Amleth’s quest are shaken at their deepest level, and it would seem to require a greater degree of strength to abandon his mission than to see it through, Eggers refuses to judge his protagonist. Amleth may be a dumb brute, but this movie finds an unalloyed kernel of beauty in the story of a warrior fulfilling their purpose. His story may have inspired one of Shakespeare’s most wounded tragedies, but “The Northman” can’t help but see a measure of ecstasy in a life of unyielding purpose.

As the seeress tells Amleth: “It is not enough to be the man who never cries.”

If anything, Amleth takes those words too close to heart, just as Eggers is so focused on the emotional fidelity of his Viking epic that he seems afraid of making any concessions to melodrama. He seems afraid of leaving any openings that a studio might have been able to exploit in order to manufacture a certain audience response. The one truly discomforting moment of vulnerability (you’ll know it when you see it) is an outlier in a film that’s often as clenched and withholding as its hero. “The Northman” doesn’t quite figure out a way to reconcile the merciless linearity of its story with the kind of flourishes that might allow it to register on a deeper level, as its confined setting and relatively limited scale (even on that $90 million budget) enforce a smallness that’s at odds with the sheer weight of its vision.

But “The Northman” is never dull. The sheer muscularity of Eggers’ direction denies it that chance, as even the simplest scenes of Amleth glowering at his enemies or trudging through Fjölnir’s primordial farmland (Northern Ireland absolutely nailing its performance as Iceland) are bracingly rendered as steps on the road to Valhalla. Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough’s pounding score pumps the story full of blood like the heart of a whale, while Jarin Blaschke’s frostbitten cinematography allows the film to flatten mud-and-shit history into the stuff of “Elden Ring” high fantasy until they feel equally true, both for Amleth and for us. Also, someone gets decapitated like every 10 minutes.

It’s not like this movie is a punishing chore; it’s not like Eggers doesn’t want multiplex audiences to like it. And they will. Because this is the kind of filmmaking that rips you out of your body so hard that you’re liable to forget what year it is. In a movie era that’s been defined by compromise, “The Northman” rides into theaters with the fury of a valkyrie — it’s the rare studio epic that would sooner die than submit to modern precepts of how it should be told. While so many people in the industry are scrambling to change their fates, Eggers reminds us just how awesome it can feel to conquer them.

Focus Features will release “The Northman” in theaters on Friday, April 22.

Movie Reviews

Review: robert eggers' 'the northman' is 2+ hours of art-house savagery.

Bob Mondello

The legend that Shakespeare based Hamlet on has inspired another work: Robert Eggers' violent new film, The Northman.

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Northman, The (United States, 2022)

The Northman is Hamlet . Or at least both were derived from the same source material, a Norse legend set in the early 900s about the revenge of a prince upon the uncle who murdered his father and wed his mother. However, while there was a surfeit of talking in Shakespeare’s version of the tragedy, Robert Eggers’ movie features very little of it, allowing the visuals to impel the narrative forward.

For anyone who has seen The Witch or The Lighthouse , it will be evident that The Northman comes from the same director and that the injection of money into the production hasn’t dampened his singular vision. The movie is dark, twisted, and steeped in the supernatural. It delights in making the viewer feel off-balance. There are no heroes or villains. Everyone has a point-of-view that emphasizes the rightness of their actions while demonizing those of others. Because the story is presented through the eyes of Amleth (the Hamlet character – take the “h” from the end and put it at the beginning – played by Alexander Skarsgard), we generally perceive him as being a righteous avenger…at least until his mother, Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman), disabuses him of a few foundational truths.

Whether intentional or not, the movie seems influenced both by Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones – the latter more in tone than in specifics; the former in certain plot details (“The Thing in the Crypt” in particular). Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet , The Northman employs supernatural elements – witchcraft, magic, and the visions of seers (one of whom is played by Bjork). Yorick gets renamed as “Heimir” and is played by Willem Dafoe – that actor’s participation establishes him as an “Eggers regular.” Ditto for Anya Taylor-Joy, who got her breakthrough in The Witch and has returned here to play Olga, Amleth’s love interest whose influence is not unlike that of Lady Macbeth.

The movie opens with the return home of King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke) from a glorious victory. The introductory scenes establish two key things: the apparent affection between Aurvandil and his queen and the tension between him and his brother, Fjolnir (Claes Bang). Not long after the king teaches his son of the importance of avenging the murder of a loved one, Amleth is given an opportunity to act on that lesson. Fjolnir commits fratricide and takes everything that his brother once owned (including his wife) as his own. Amleth escapes to “the land of Rus,” where he develops a frightening reputation as a warrior. But he is haunted by dreams hinting at his fate and ends up doing whatever is necessary to track down Fjolnir – who has been deposed and now runs a small hamlet on the forbidding island of Iceland – and enact his revenge. Helping him is Olga, a fellow slave who knows a thing or two about potions.

Eggers keeps the experience visually interesting. Many scenes are filmed in a state of near-total color desaturation, resulting in images that are monochromatic. The naked, untamed terrain of Iceland is presented in all its widescreen glory. The director favors longer shots over short ones and there’s one extended single-take that follows the sacking and pillaging of a town from start to finish – the latter moment occurring when a house full of children is set ablaze by the invaders.

Alexander Skarsgard has transformed himself into a hulking monster – quite unlike any previous version of Hamlet to grace the screen. He has a keen intellect but is blinded by his need for vengeance. Only toward the end does he begin to see beyond his lifelong obsession. Nicole Kidman doesn’t have a lot to do but her one showy scene is rich with twists, turns, and barbed daggers. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Olga is comely, loyal, and deadly.

Like Akira Kurosawa’s three films with strong Shakespearean connections ( Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well , and Ran ), The Northman illustrates that a compelling production can be mounted without the benefit of the Bard’s dialogue. The Northman is gripping cinema of the sort that we get too little of today, when too often a director’s vision is diluted by box office imperatives and the lure of four-quadrant appeal.

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Screen Rant

10 reasons furiosa underperformed at the box office despite its 90% rotten tomatoes score.

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How The Northman Prepared Anya Taylor-Joy For Furiosa Mad Max Prequel

Furiosa star issues statement reminding people the movie is “fiction” after angry dms, jurassic world 4 story update teases return to jurassic park roots.

The Mad Max franchise has always had niche appeal; it's not a huge box office draw like Marvel or Star Wars.
Movie prequels often bomb at the box office due to their predetermined ending and lack of compelling storytelling.
Furiosa struggled to appeal to all four quadrants and relied on word-of-mouth.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been met with universally positive reviews from critics and good word-of-mouth from audiences – so why is it performing so badly at the box office? Set a couple of decades before the events of Mad Max: Fury Road , Furiosa fills in the backstory of its titular character, previously played by Charlize Theron but played here by Anya Taylor-Joy. The film follows Furiosa’s crusade to avenge her late mother, who was killed by a sadistic warlord.

With George Miller back in the director’s chair, Furiosa delivers on the high-octane action spectacle it promises – but its box office performance has yet to match its positive critical reception. Furiosa ’s disappointing opening weekend yielded a return of just $64-66 million, which is a long way from topping its whopping production budget of $168 million. There are a few reasons for Furiosa ’s underwhelming commercial performance.

Anya Taylor-Joy had some thoughts on her starring role in Furiosa, based on the extreme conditions faced while filming Viking epic The Northman.

10 The Mad Max Franchise Has Never Been A Truly Huge Box Office Draw

Why the mad max franchise isn't a guaranteed box office hit.

Unlike Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which have broken a laundry list of box office records during their historic run, the Mad Max series has never been a massive box office draw. The first movie set a Guinness world record for most profitable film ever made , but that’s only because it was produced on a shoestring budget and has enjoyed a cult following in the decades since its release. Mad Max is a popular franchise with a dedicated fan base, but it’s always had more niche appeal than the average action movie series.

Furiosa has a similarly huge budget and it’s arriving in a much more precarious filmgoing landscape.

Warner Bros. got lucky with the blockbuster box office run of Mad Max: Fury Road , but even then, it barely made a profit on its bloated budget. Furiosa has a similarly huge budget and it’s arriving in a much more precarious filmgoing landscape. Even at the best of times, Furiosa might not have been a big moneymaker.

9 Movie Prequels Often Underperform At The Box Office

How movie backstories struggle to find an audience.

From Solo: A Star Wars Story to The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes , movie prequels have been known to underperform at the box office. The storied history of a world like Star Wars or The Hunger Games or, indeed, Mad Max , might seem like a big, untapped well of content to a studio that owns the I.P., but prequel stories are rarely compelling, because the ending is predetermined. Anyone who’s seen Mad Max: Fury Road knows exactly how Furiosa will end .

Not every prequel has bombed at the box office. The Star Wars prequel trilogy did really well in spite of its mixed reviews, and Monsters University outgrossed its predecessor. But there are a lot more prequels that bomb than succeed, because they’re usually not stories that need to be told (e.g. Han Solo’s origin story).

8 Furiosa Isn’t A Four-Quadrant Movie

Beyond demographics: why furiosa missed the "four-quadrant" mark.

In Hollywood, the most prized type of movie is a four-quadrant movie. A four-quadrant movie is a movie that appeals to the four major audience demographics: males under 25, females under 25, males over 25, and females over 25. Despite having a strong female protagonist, Furiosa only really appealed to male audiences. Furiosa ’s opening-weekend viewership was made up of mostly male moviegoers – 72% to be exact – and 55% of audience members were between the ages of 18 and 34 (via Deadline ).

To make the kind of money that Furiosa would need to turn a profit, it needed to appeal to as many audience members as possible.

Furiosa might be underperforming at the box office because it only appeals to half of the four quadrants. To make the kind of money that Furiosa would need to turn a profit, it needed to appeal to as many audience members as possible. By cutting its potential viewership in half, Furiosa shot itself in the foot.

7 Mad Max: Fury Road Came Out 9 Years Ago

The long shadow of mad max: fury road.

When Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters in 2015, it was instantly praised as one of the greatest action movies ever made and brought a whole new generation of fans to the Mad Max franchise. But it took almost a decade for Warner Bros. to release another Mad Max film. Strategizing sequels is a tough business, but it generally works better if the studio strikes while the iron is hot. If they have a hit movie like Fury Road , they need to get the follow-up into theaters within the next three or four years.

Waiting nine years to release another Mad Max movie after Fury Road has undoubtedly affected its box office performance. In the first year or so after Fury Road , audiences were champing at the bit for more Mad Max . But in 2024, it seems that those fans have moved on.

6 Furiosa’s Stars Aren’t Necessarily A Box Office Draw

Why furiosa's cast didn't guarantee success.

Furiosa has two famous, recognizable actors in its lead roles: Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa herself and Chris Hemsworth as the film’s eccentric villain, Dementus. There’s no denying that Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth are great actors who each give a terrific performance in the film. But are either of them really a box office draw in the way that Timothée Chalamet or Sydney Sweeney are?

Taylor-Joy made her name in dark, low-budget fare like The Witch , Split , and Thoroughbreds . Her bigger-budget movies, like The Northman and Last Night in Soho , have bombed at the box office. Hemsworth, on the other hand, has headlined blockbusters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the star of those movies is really Thor. It’s not Hemsworth’s star power that sells those movies; it’s the popularity of the Thor character. Furiosa didn’t really have much star power to capitalize on.

5 Furiosa Is The Kind Of Movie That Relies On Good Word-Of-Mouth

Why furiosa needed buzz to build.

With its gonzo visual style and its attachment to a niche franchise, Furiosa is the kind of movie that relies on good word-of-mouth. Movies from franchises like the MCU and Fast & Furious tend to have a very top-heavy box office performance, because the existing fan base will buy tickets to see the film as early as possible on the opening weekend. Whether those movies have legs after an impressive opening weekend depends on whether those fans enjoyed it enough to recommend it to their friends.

Furiosa is too strange to have that kind of instant blockbuster success. But it is a really good movie, so viewers who have seen it will tell their friends to check it out. This word-of-mouth is crucial to a film like Furiosa ’s success. It may have underperformed on its opening weekend, but it just might leg it out to a respectable profit in the coming weeks.

4 Furiosa Had To Compete With Garfield

An unexpected rival.

While Furiosa was underperforming at the box office, The Garfield Movie was enjoying commercial success on the same weekend. The Garfield Movie ’s success can partly be attributed to its much more reasonable budget, meaning it had to gross a lot less than Furiosa to be considered a hit. But it also had a wider appeal than Furiosa . As an R-rated car chase movie, Furiosa only appealed to fans of the action genre over the age of 17.

As a family-friendly comedy about an iconic talking cat, The Garfield Movie appealed to everyone. On the weekend of May 24, parents could either fork out for a babysitter and watch Furiosa without their kids, or take their kids to the theater with them and watch The Garfield Movie . Based on the numbers, it looks like most of them chose the latter.

3 Audiences Know Furiosa Probably Won't Take That Long To Release On VOD

The streaming threat to box office performance.

It used to be that a new tentpole movie wouldn’t be available for at-home viewing until months after its initial release. But in recent years, audiences have gotten used to movies arriving on streaming platforms shortly after their theatrical release. Furiosa ’s streaming release is unconfirmed as of yet, but The Fall Guy jumped from theaters to streaming in just under three weeks. Audiences have become conditioned to wait.

This isn’t just a problem for Furiosa – it’s become an industry-wide concern – but it’s particularly prevalent for Warner Bros. properties. Ever since Warners adopted a day-and-date release strategy for a bunch of its post-COVID movies, it’s seemed as though the studio is more concerned with padding out its streaming platform with lucrative content than turning a profit in the theatrical market. Why go to a theater to see Furiosa when it’ll probably be on VOD in less than a month?

2 The Popularity Of Furiosa Was Based More On Charlize Theron's Performance Than The Actual Character

Why furiosa wasn't just about the actress.

It was a wise move to make a Furiosa-centric spin-off after Mad Max: Fury Road , since Furiosa stole the show from Max in Fury Road . But Furiosa’s popularity was based less on the character herself and more on Charlize Theron’s ferocious, nuanced performance as the post-apocalyptic warrior. The Furiosa movie relies on the Furiosa character herself, played by a younger actor in her origin story.

Anya Taylor-Joy is a fine actor and a popular up-and-coming star, but she’s not the Furiosa that audiences fell in love with.

If Warners had made a Furiosa spin-off with Theron playing the older Furiosa seen in Fury Road , then it might’ve had a better chance at box office success. Taylor-Joy playing Furiosa is like Alden Ehrenreich playing Han Solo. Even if they do a good job, it doesn’t feel right.

1 Furiosa's Box Office Struggles Are Bigger Than Just The Mad Max Prequel

A wider trend: furiosa's struggles reflect a changing movie market.

Furiosa ’s box office underperformance isn’t an isolated incident. Box office receipts have been drastically down in general. Madame Web , Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire , Arthur the King , The Fall Guy , IF , and many more big-budget, star-studded studio movies have bombed in 2024. There are a few reasons for this: casual moviegoers would rather watch movies at home than go out to a theater; audiences have become disillusioned with the glut of sequels and reboots; budgets have gotten ridiculously inflated post-COVID, making the threshold of profitability higher and higher.

The box office failure of Furiosa is a symptom of an industry-wide problem. It’s not the only big-budget tentpole movie to bomb at the box office this year, and it probably won’t be the last. Even positive reviews and recognizable franchises can’t guarantee a movie’s success in this brave new world.

Source: Deadline

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Finally: ‘Fresh Kills’ Is the Best Mafia Movie in Ages

Set in Staten Island, the new drama directed by Jennifer Esposito skips most mob clichés to tell a different kind of story. It’s one of the summer’s biggest movie surprises.

Jordan Hoffman

Quiver Distribution

We who review movies regularly know how to spot red flags, and not even Baruch Spinoza deploying all his view-from-nowhere skills could say Fresh Kills didn’t look like trouble. This is a mafia drama, the most played-out of all genres, particularly for independent films, and it was written and directed by an actor known mostly from cop shows. Lastly, it debuted a year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival , which from time to time does launch good projects, but also unleashes plenty of god-awful mafia dramas written and directed by people you know from cop shows.

But Fresh Kills proves we must always give everything a fair shake. Jennifer Esposito’s debut feature isn’t a mere “not bad"—it’s a stone-cold “this is great” success. The actress (from Blue Bloods , NCIS , and a hundred other things) is a major directing talent who, if the world were a righteous place, would have offers from every studio to create intelligent and finely observed movies for adults from now until the end of time. She’s also in the damn thing, as the mother of two very different sisters (Emily Bader and Odessa A’zion) navigating their unusual living conditions from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s.

Their environment is the rather dramatically named real neighborhood Fresh Kills (“kill” being Dutch for “stream”) in Staten Island.

Thanks to The Sopranos , everyone knows about North Jersey Italian-American culture. But more hardcore (even more than the Nassau/Suffolk county lines in Long Island) is New York City’s seldom-discussed fifth borough, Staten Island, a liminal space of urban and suburban living that for decades smelled like the rotten flatulence of a dying rhinoceros.

It’s no joke. For a great long time, Staten Island’s largest claim to fame was the Fresh Kills landfill, where the garbage of the most important city in the world was sent to rot. Growing up as I did in New Jersey, my family would often take car trips to Queens or Long Island. The faster route was through Staten Island, but my mother, sister, and I would rebel against my father’s shortcut because the putrid sulfur scent was so bad that we’d prefer to sit in traffic and drive via the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan when we visited Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Mike.

My point is that when the stench of Fresh Kills makes its first appearance just a few minutes into Esposito’s movie, I knew I was in safe hands. She knows it because she lived it, and everything about this movie—from the hairstyles to the sofas to the music coming out of the cars (like “ Lookout Weekend ” by Debbie Deb)—is absolutely right.

More exciting than this verisimilitude is her deceptively simple way of telling a mob tale. This is a look at the lifestyle from the inside, from those who do all they can to deny the reality of what, exactly, is the family business. Some are more clueless than others—and it’s the shy and pure-hearted Rose (Bender) slowly having her awakening that is the spine of the picture.

I won’t get into the details about Dad (Domenick Lombardozzi, always terrific) or Aunt Chris ( Sopranos alum Annabella Sciorra) or cousin Allie (Nicholas Cirillo) and the various crosses and double-crosses, because the specific plot points aren’t important. We see only what Rose sees, so that means no backroom discussions about who is getting whacked or where the men are going on their “business trips.” Indeed, Lombardozzi and his big warm smile comes across like father of the year, especially when gifting Connie (A’zion) with a car for her birthday.

Rose’s guard finally comes up when Dad gives the sisters a bakery to run as a present. She’s an independent thinker and wouldn’t mind having an legitimate job—she dreams of being an assistant to Sally Jessy Raphael, which is an amazing flourish on Esposito’s part—but Connie accepts the keys with a big “ohmyGAWWWWD” without worrying for a minute that she has no idea how to actually run a business.

Naturally, the bakery is a front for whatever bad stuff is happening in the basement. But Fresh Kills has the generosity of spirit to let the audience fill in the gaps. There are cars that follow the girls around, but we never cut to their interiors. We’ve all seen that movie before, even if Rose and Connie haven’t.

By the end, some blood does get spilled, and again Esposito subverts expectations. The kills of Fresh Kills aren’t elaborate. They happen with little warning and with great impact. Every decision she makes is the right one.

Perhaps my praise for this project is a little elevated because my expectations were low, but this really is a gem of a small picture. From the Italian rainbow cookies to the shout-out to the Wilfred Beauty Academy, the details in Fresh Kills are remarkable, but it wouldn’t mean much without great performances. A’zion has the showier role with the rich accent and hothead attitude, but Bader, exuding a young Pam Dawber/Margot Kidder era-appropriate appeal, is quietly mesmerizing as the eyes and ears on this unbelievable world. The Fresh Kills landfill was finally closed in 2001, and the area doesn’t stink so bad anymore. How many families like this still exist, however, is unknown.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here .

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Movie Review: Andrew McCarthy hunts the ‘Brat Pack’ blowback in the documentary ‘Brats’

This image released by ABC News Studios shows Demi Moore, left, and Andrew McCarthy in a scene from the documentary “Brats.” (ABC News Studios via AP)

This image released by ABC News Studios shows Ally Sheedy in a scene from the documentary “Brats.” (ABC News Studios via AP)

Ally Sheedy, left, and Demi Moore attend the “Brats” premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

This image released by ABC News Studios shows Rob Lowe in a scene from the documentary “Brats.” (ABC News Studios via AP)

Andrew McCarthy, from left, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore and Jon Cryer attend the “Brats” premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Andrew McCarthy attends the “Brats” premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Demi Moore attends the “Brats” premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

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He’s 61 now, well-off and trim. He has many accomplishments as an actor but there’s this one thing he finds hard to shake: Back in 1985, he got called something.

During the Reagan administration, rising star Andrew McCarthy was lumped into an amorphous group of young actors who were changing Hollywood. They were called the “Brat Pack.”

Now, it’s never nice to be called a “brat” or to lose your individuality to a pack, but McCarthy and the members of this collective — Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe and maybe Anthony Michael Hall — seemed to implode.

“That changed my life,” says McCarthy, who starred in “Pretty in Pink” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” After being branded, the so-called bratty actors scattered, not wanting to work together again. The stigma, McCarthy says, was “defining.” He has PTSD, he suggests.

Andrew McCarthy, from left, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore and Jon Cryer attend the "Brats" premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Andrew McCarthy, from left, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore and Jon Cryer attend the “Brats” premiere in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Now almost 40 years later, McCarthy hit the road to star in and direct his new Hulu documentary, “Brats,” trying to get a handle on the label and how some of the pack handled it.

First stop is a wary Estevez, who acknowledges that the Brat Pack term had some early benefits but was ultimately “more damage than good.”

FILE - Honoree Nicole Kidman speaks during the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to her, Saturday, April 27, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The tribute will air on TNT on Monday. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

“It created the perception that we were lightweights,” he adds.

Then there are visits to Sheedy, Moore, Lowe, Jon Cryer, Tim Hutton and Lea Thompson — all who commiserate with McCarthy. (Ringwald and Nelson are notable absences, perhaps still nursing wounds .) These visits have the feeling of therapy sessions.

“Marty Scorsese, Steven Spielberg is not going to call up somebody who’s in the Brat Pack,” McCarthy tells Estevez, who admits to pulling out of a movie at the prospect of teaming up with McCarthy.

(Not to be rude, but the Brat Pack-adjacent Tom Cruise did a movie with Scorsese, “The Color of Money,” Moore became the hottest thing in Hollywood in the ‘90s and Robert Downey Jr., also Pack-adjacent, just took home an Oscar.)

As he pays one former colleague after another a visit at their well-appointed homes, the heat of injustice has dissipated. Moore’s estate with its tasteful wood panels, shaded pool, massive glass walls and Japanese-inspired minimalism doesn’t exactly scream, “That label from 1985 really destroyed my life.”

The doc is scored well, with songs by The Cure, Lou Reed and Steve Winwood, “Forever Young” by Alphaville and a haunting “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” cover by Zoe Fox and the Rocket Clocks.

Rob Lowe in a scene from the documentary “Brats.” (ABC News Studios via AP)

But McCarthy’s visual style is too fragmented, happy to capture his scrambling camera and sound operators in the frame and changing up his shots from guerilla-style jerky iPhone images to tasteful, polished portraits. His use of old clips is excellent, incorporating not just scenes from movies but TV interview outtakes, too.

A more interesting thing happens in McCarthy’s road movie by the halfway mark — it becomes a sort of celebration of Brat Pack movies. Cultural observer Malcolm Gladwell talks about the generational transition in Hollywood, while Susannah Gora, who wrote “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried” about the Brat Pack’s impact, notes that teens in the Midwest were singing British New Wave synth-pop tunes thanks to McCarthy.

Pop culture critic Ira Madison III zeroes in on the lack of diversity in Brat Pack movies, “Less Than Zero” writer Bret Easton Ellis notes the influence the movies had on his work, and screenwriter Michael Oates Palmer comments that Brat Pack movies were the first to take “young people’s lives seriously.”

These are the building blocks of a better movie — Gladwell cutely mentions that he used parts of Cryer’s character Duckie from “Pretty in Pink” as his identity in high school — but McCarthy isn’t willing to stray.

Andrew McCarthy attends the "Brats" premiere during the Tribeca Festival at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Friday, June 7, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Andrew McCarthy attends the “Brats” premiere. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

He comes across as a very thoughtful guy, able to quote Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, reserved, shy and wry, so often deep in his feelings. But this bratty label he cannot shake. He also wrote about it in “Brat: An ‘80s Story.” It is his Moby Dick.

That analogy works when he finally harpoons his white whale — David Blum, who at 29 in 1985, hoping to snag some attention in the journalism world, coined the phrase “Brat Pack” — a flip play on the Rat Pack — for New York magazine.

McCarthy sits down with Blum at the conclusion of the film — the aggrieved actor and the journalist meeting for the first time four decades after being dragged into the ‘80s cultural lexicon. This is the “You can’t handle the truth” moment.

And yet McCarthy is so nice that while he makes his case well, he sort of also understands Blum’s position and kind of likes him, too. Will Blum finally admit that the label is scathing? “I mean, I guess in retrospect, yes. At the time, no. I was proud of the creation of the phrase,” says the writer. They end their meeting with a hug.

Like a Brat Pack movie.

“Brats,” a Hulu release premiering Thursday, is not rated but has smoking, love scenes and swearing. Running time: 93 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Over the last few years, there has been a trend of opulent destination wedding romantic comedies. Two years ago, there was " Ticket to Paradise " starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts and " Shotgun Wedding " starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel . Most recently, " Anyone But You ," starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell , got rave reviews and made bank at the box office. So it was about time a watered-down Netflix version of this new sub-genre emerged. Enter "Mother of the Bride" starring Brooke Shields , Miranda Cosgrove , and Benjamin Bratt . Like a magpie, it takes bits and pieces from better films and cobbles it together with some paper-thin characters into something that is a movie in definition only.

I am normally a fan of the films Brad Krevoy and Steve Stabler (working under the moniker Motion Picture Corporation of America) have made with Netflix. I've rewatched both "The Knight Before Christmas" and "A Castle for Christmas" (also starring Shields) more times than I care to share. I've even written positively about the Lindsay Lohan vehicles " Falling for Christmas " and " Irish Wish " on this very website. Director Mark Waters has a pretty strong track record in the genre, helming star-studded films like the original "Mean Girls," "Freaky Friday," and " Just Like Heaven ." Even his less-than-stellar films like "Head over Heels" and " Ghosts of Girlfriends Past ” are, I confess, guilty pleasures.

So what exactly went so wrong here? The hackneyed script from Robin Bernheim, best known for writing and producing the Netflix "The Princess Switch" trilogy, strands the film's cast in shallow waters.

Shields is game as Lana, a world-renowned geneticist nursing some decades-old romantic wounds. This vein of slightly neurotic, screwball comedy is something she's honed since her "Suddenly Susan" sitcom days. Lana goes into a full-on tailspin when she discovers her daughter Emma (an incredibly bland Miranda Cosgrove) is marrying RJ ( Sean Teale ), who turns out to be the son of Will (Benjamin Bratt, sadly sapped of his trademark charm), the man who broke her heart in college. Rachael Harris basically plays herself as Lana's perpetually horny cougar sister, who at one point describes a beefed-up Chad Michael Murray as a "Hemsworth hottie." Michael McDonald and Wilson Cruz play the token happily married gay couple, whose entire raison d'être is to be sassy and supply the audience with exposition.

Emma is a lifestyle influencer who has inked a six-figure deal with a mega-corp to which she has essentially sold her wedding as a product to promote their resort in Phuket, Thailand. While there is endless chatter about Instagram photo shoots and designer dress fittings, the film doesn't explore the economics in play here. What could have been a sharp satire about the commodification of our lives, down to those days that are supposed to be the most sacred, becomes a limp lesson in work-life balance. This theme is so threadbare it makes "27 Dresses" seem downright didactic in comparison. The only cast member who seems to be on this satirical page is Tasneem Roc as a singularly unhinged brand manager named Camala, who mercifully supplies the film with its few paltry laughs.

You may have noticed I have not even mentioned the groom yet. That is because he may as well not even be in the film. His character is so underdeveloped, he feels like those Instagram boyfriends who take pictures of their influencer girlfriends but whose face you never see. Only he doesn't even do that! Vague dialogue in the beginning explains his job and how he and Emma met and fell in love. Still, it's so inconsequential by the time you get to the actual wedding you not only don't remember who's getting married, you don't even know why they're getting married. What do they like about each other? How does he make money? Why does his dad give them a multi-millionaire dollar condo in Tribeca if they met and fell in love while working together in London? The script would have to include something other than stock characters to answer any of those questions.

Maybe a film this shallow is exactly what this sub-genre deserves, considering how blissfully unaware any of these films (even the ones I enjoy) tend to be about the obscene privilege and wealth that someone must have to attend a destination wedding in the first place. Maybe, in some twisted way, the hollowness of this film is its own kind of criticism.

It’s a shame to see someone as talented as Shields end up in drivel like this. Ultimately, “Mother of the Bride” is the nadir for almost everyone involved.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture.

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Mother of the Bride (2024)

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‘Firebrand’ Review: Placid Queen

Top-shelf actors and authentic Tudor table-setting fail to quicken this glumly unfocused take on the exploits of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr.

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A woman and a man in period royal clothing sit and embrace one another.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Not until I watched “Firebrand” did I think the sight of Jude Law’s naked behind could cause me to recoil rather than rejoice. Playing a late-career Henry VIII, Law is all rutting buttocks and barely mobile bulk, an obese, paranoid ruler with a weeping leg wound where maggots wriggle in ecstatic close-up. Law (and his director, Karim Aïnouz) might be laying it on thick, but his grotesque tyrant is the only thing lifting this dreary, ahistoric drama out of its narrative doldrums.

Adapted from Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2012 novel, “Queen’s Gambit,” “Firebrand” seeks to highlight Henry’s sixth and last wife, Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), the only spouse to outlive the infamous king. Studious and devout, Parr conceals her Protestant sympathies while arguing in favor of women’s education and an English-language Bible. Her clandestine support for the poet and Protestant preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), however, almost proves fatal when she’s accused of heresy by an oily bishop (Simon Russell Beale).

Unfolding in and around Whitehall Palace in 1547, the movie is lavishly, oppressively costumed, the actors imprisoned by fabric and a screenplay that plays fast and loose with the historical record. A plummy voice-over describes Henry’s kingdom as “blood-soaked” and “plague-ridden,” though we see little of either plasma or pustules. What we see is a queen whose downcast demeanor speaks less of a firebrand than of a wife placating a husband who isn’t above spousal decapitation if a younger, saucier option should wiggle past.

That Parr deserves a spotlight is easily argued. But the woman who believed herself chosen by God to influence the King is, despite Vikander’s skills, ill-served by this meandering, glum picture. So much so that, in just two brief appearances, Doherty’s vivid portrayal of the reformist Askew makes us wonder whom the film’s title is really memorializing.

Firebrand Rated R for spousal abuse and celebrity skin. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters.

‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’ Review: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Save the World in Side-Splitting Looney Tunes Movie

A casualty of Warner Bros.' new cost-slashing strategy, this feature-length Looney Tunes offering is seeking distribution around the world.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’ Review: Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Save the World in Side-Splitting Looney Tunes Movie 2 days ago

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

Look up “cartoon villain” in the dictionary, and you’re likely to find a picture of David Zaslav. Since taking over Warner Bros. Discovery, he’s cast aside not one, but two feature-length Looney Tunes projects. Last November, there was the live-action/animated hybrid “Coyote vs. Acme,” which was given the “Batgirl” treatment (except, unlike that film, this one was done, so the tax write-off reasoning doesn’t track). Lower profile but no less deserving of a proper release, WB Animation’s hand-drawn Porky Pig and Daffy Duck stand-alone “The Day the Earth Blew Up” was made for Max, but went on the block last fall. It’s still looking for U.S. distribution.

Reviewed at Annecy Animation Festival, June 11, 2024. Running time: 91 MIN.

Production: (Animated) A Warner Bros. Animation presentation. Producer: Bonnie Arnold. Executive producers: Peter Browngardt, Sam Register.
Crew: Director: Peter Browngardt. Screenplay: Darrick Bachman, Pete Browngardt, Kevin Costello, Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, Eddie Trigueros. Editor: Nick Simotas. Music: Joshua Moshier. Animation direction: Joey Capps.
With: Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, Fred Tatasciore, Laraine Newman, Wayne Knight.

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Movie Review: ‘The Northman’ (Second Opinion)
'The Northman' review: Revenge is served, white-hot and bloody : NPR
THE NORTHMAN
'The Northman' movie review
'The Northman' (2022)
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COMMENTS

The Northman movie review & film summary (2022)
It's one of the many magical tendrils intertwining, and sometimes knotting up, "The Northman," a film where Björk portrays a blind seer pointing Amleth toward a sword with a dull-less blade and an unquenchable thirst for death. David Lowery 's " The Green Knight " will probably serve as an all-too-easy comparison for many.
The Northman
The Northman is an epic revenge thriller, that explores how far a Viking prince will go to seek justice for his murdered father.
The Northman
The Northman Reviews. Neither tragedy nor Eggers skimp on violence, screams, sweat, blood and swords, along with ambitious mise en scène, some of the best photography and one of the most epic ...
'The Northman' Review: Danish Premodern
The Northman. Directed by Robert Eggers. Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, History, Thriller. R. 2h 16m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our ...
The Northman First Reviews: Bold, Unflinching, Visually Breathtaking
The first reviews of The Northman are mostly very positive, with critics highlighting the performances and the craftsmanship, which come together in a spectacular blockbuster unlike any we've gotten in a long time. ... The movie that The Northman most resembles is The Revenant, ...
'The Northman' review: Robert Eggers' mighty Viking epic
Alexander Skarsgård is in full-blown Old Norse berserker mode, starring with Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke in Robert Eggers' "The Northman."
The Northman (2022)
While "The Northman" is watchable and entertaining enough for what it turned out to be, then this is hardly a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. My rating of "The Northman" lands on a six out of ten stars.
'The Northman' Review: Alexander Skarsgård's Bloody Viking Epic
'The Northman' Review: Alexander Skarsgård Hacks His Way Through Bloody Viking Epic 'The Witch' director Robert Eggers has vision to burn, but robs this brutal 10th-century revenge story of ...
The Northman (2022)
The Northman: Directed by Robert Eggers. With Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke. A young Viking prince is on a quest to avenge his father's murder.
'The Northman' Review: Alexander Skarsgard & Nicole Kidman Go Viking
Alexander Skarsgard and Nicole Kidman in Robert Eggers' 'The Northman': Film Review. Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy and Ethan Hawke also star in this big, bloody medieval Viking saga of fate ...
The Northman Review
The Northman will hit theaters on April 22, 2022. Two movies are at war within The Northman, the latest film from The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers. The first is a fascinating ...
The Northman Review: Robert Eggers' Viking Epic Is His ...
The Northman, starring Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy, is a captivating story of love and hatred that might be Robert Eggers' best.
'The Northman' review: Alexander Skarsgard stars in Viking epic
Part "Hamlet," part "Conan the Barbarian" and a whole lot of "Vikings," "The Northman" is a gorgeously shot exercise in visceral thrills that goes heavy on atmospherics and very ...
The Northman review: Fear the reaper, when he is Skarsgård
The Northman is by far Eggers' biggest film in both scope and budget, and it looks it: a sprawling summit-of-the-gods epic shot through with rich, hallucinatory set pieces, and movie stars in wild ...
The Northman' Review: A Brutal, Bloody Tale of Viking-on-Viking Crime
In a recent profile of Eggers, the New Yorker claimed that The Northman might be "the most accurate Viking movie ever made," and seems to mean this as a compliment. The truth is that Eggers ...
The Northman Review
Alexander Skarsgård is a man on a revenge mission in Robert Eggers' Viking epic The Northman. Read the Empire review now.
The Northman Movie Review
Powerful, incredibly bloody, vengeance-fueled Viking saga. Read Common Sense Media's The Northman review, age rating, and parents guide.
The Northman Review: Robert Eggers' Viking Epic Goes Hard ...
A Viking legend retold with such raw immediacy that its fjords of blood seem freshly spilled for the first time in 1,000 years. All you really need to know about " The Northman " — a $90 ...
Review: Robert Eggers' 'The Northman' is 2+ hours of art-house ...
The legend that Shakespeare based Hamlet on has inspired another work: Robert Eggers' violent new film, The Northman.
Why The Northman's Reviews Are So Positive
Robert Eggers' epic Viking drama, The Northman, opened to primarily positive reviews from critics, with the director's visuals being highly praised.
The Northman
The Northman is a 2022 American epic historical action film directed by Robert Eggers from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sjón. Based on the legend of Amleth , the film stars Alexander Skarsgård (who also produced), Nicole Kidman , Claes Bang , Anya Taylor-Joy , Gustav Lindh , with Ethan Hawke , Björk , and Willem Dafoe .
Northman, The
One of the strengths of The Northman is that it plays out as expected without ever being predictable. It's a bold, uncompromising film that doesn't self-censor when it comes to blood and gore. Still, a lot of the most gruesome moments are hinted at more than shown, allowing the viewer's imagination to fill in the blanks.
10 Reasons Furiosa Underperformed At The Box Office Despite Its 90%
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been met with universally positive reviews and good word-of-mouth - so why is it underperforming at the box office?
Finally: 'Fresh Kills' Is the Best Mafia Movie in Ages
Set in Staten Island, the new drama directed by Jennifer Esposito skips most mob clichés to tell a different kind of story. It's one of the summer's biggest movie surprises.
Movie Review: Andrew McCarthy hunts the 'Brat Pack' blowback in the
Back in 1985, rising star Andrew McCarthy was lumped into an amorphous group of young actors who were changing Hollywood. They were called the "Brat Pack."
'Hit Man' Review: It's a Hit, Man
Glen Powell stars in one of the year's funniest, sexiest, most enjoyable movies — and somehow it's surprisingly deep, too.
Hit Man movie review & film summary (2024)
Richard Linklater 's "Hit Man" is for them. Like its protagonist's ability to basically change identities depending on the situation, it's a film that knows what its clients need, shifting from comedy to romance to thriller to a philosophical study of the human capacity to change. It's one of the smartest films in years, a movie ...
Mother of the Bride movie review (2024)
An unoriginal film that merely assembles elements from superior movies, "Mother of the Bride" lacks depth in its characters.
'Firebrand' Review: Placid Queen
Watch on. Unfolding in and around Whitehall Palace in 1547, the movie is lavishly, oppressively costumed, the actors imprisoned by fabric and a screenplay that plays fast and loose with the ...
'The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie' Review
A casualty of Warner Bros.' new cost-slashing strategy, feature-length 'The Day the Earth Blew Up' is seeking distribution around the world.

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