Hacker Cinema
The Northman
2022 · Film · 137 min
Directed by Robert Eggers
Prince Amleth is on the verge of becoming a man when his father is brutally murdered by his uncle, who kidnaps the boy's mother. Two decades later, Amleth is now a Viking who's on a mission to save his mother, kill his uncle and avenge his father.
7 positive6 neutralfrom 13 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
Recent good movies, just going in release order off my letterboxd, although I have to be careful to include only "Hollywood" here:
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is
- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good
- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy
- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie
- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes
- Companion
- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric
- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage
- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie
- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie
- Poor Things
- Oppenheimer ...
- Renfield
- The Menu
- The Banshees of Insherin
- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)
- Prey
- Bullet Train - fun action movie
- The Northman
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen
- The Gentlemen
- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...
- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic
in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.
Not all American movies but most:
Have you watch Pig (2021)? It wasn't even nominated to the Oscars. Also IMHO Tar (2022) is an excellent movie. J'Accuse (An Office and a Spy...) (2019), The Father (2020), Also liked The Northman (2022). IMHO The House of Gucci (2021) is the best acting of Adam Driver that made me forget he acted in Star Wars.
Sorry but I need to continue with Boiling Point (2021), Dune (2021), Riders of Justice (2020), The Mauritanian (2021).
Hahaha, I expected the criticism of my comment to be that too much of what I was counting as good is "high brow", in fact. Too artsy-fartsy. Leaning too much toward "The Green Knight" and not enough toward "Jaws".
[EDIT] Here, lemme just list the 2022 movies that I think were worth a watch if you're at all into the kind of thing they were doing:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Glass Onion Top Gun: Maverick Bullet Train All Quiet on the Western Front Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Crimes of the Future Death on the Nile Everything Everywhere All at Once White Noise Nope Prey The Sadness You Won't Be Alone Dual The Northman The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (arguably just a less-exciting RRR, but hey, it makes up for it by also being shorter and non-horror comedy *is* a bit weak lately, so it gets in) Watcher Dashcam (one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time—you may hate it, but you'll feel *something*, damnit!) The Banshees of Inisherin
This is just ones I've seen (I usually manage, like, 1/2 of the films in a year that I want to watch, at best) and excluding a few that did in fact suck or that I didn't think quite merited inclusion (e.g. The Menu) or that are good for what they are but are pretty narrow in appeal (Violent Night). Like, I hear Cyrano is great, Emily the Criminal, Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Whale, and a bunch of others, but haven't made it to them yet (and, inevitably, I'll end up never watching some of them).
"Quite a few of those are sequels, remakes, or adaptations! White Noise was a book! Death on the Nile! One of those is a marvel movie!" yeah, I know—good luck finding an era in Hollywood when a ton of the films, and even a ton of the good films, weren't such. I reject that as, specifically, a complaint about this moment in cinema (it has more merit as a criticism of cinema in general)
There was a scene in The Northman (2022) which is based on Ibn Fadlan. After seeing the movie I read the account [0] which I found very interesting. This describes the scene in the movie:
> The men came with shields and sticks. She was given a cup of intoxicating drink; she sang at taking it and drank. The interpreter told me that she in this fashion bade farewell to all her girl companions. Then she was given another cup; she took it and sang for a long time while the old woman incited her to drink up and go into the pavillion where her master lay. I saw that she was distracted; she wanted to enter the pavillion but put her head between it and the boat. Then the old woman siezed her head and made her enter the pavillion and entered with her. Thereupon the men began to strike with the sticks on the shields so that her cries could not be heard and the other slave girls would not seek to escape death with their masters. Then six men went into the pavillion and each had intercourse with the girl. Then they laid her at the side of her master; two held her feet and two her hands; the old woman known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.
[0] http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ibn_fdln.shtml
Immigration? Ha, they took abnormal amounts of slaves from Russia. This was not immigration.
The recent movie The Northman covered a bit.
> “You can't watch a really good movie with a satisfying conclusion, they are all written for a sequel.”
This only applies to the Disneyfied mega-blockbusters that represent a large share of production dollars but a small share of movies created overall.
It’s never been easier to find and access good movies, new and old. No matter if they’re from Iowa or France or Korea, practically anything is available on streaming a few clicks away. The problem is really the overwhelming abundance of choice. Given the choice of “The Batman” and “The Northman”, people will default to the familiar title and then complain that it’s derivative and anticipates a sequel.
Will a soundbar help me understand accents? That is my main problem. Almost every show I watch has heavy accents for flair (fantasy) or because it was cheaper to do with non-US actors (action). I either have to watch with subs and miss the beautiful shots because I'm reading or rewind a couple times per episode when I can't get something.
Off the top of my head - Northman, just watched it today, great movie, definitely stuff I didn't understand. House of the Dragon. Peripheral. It really feels like every show now.
I guess you haven't seen Top Gun: Maverick or The Northman, to mention a couple movies from this year?
> Super heroes only work if the rules of their fictional universe are believable enough that suspension of disbelief can work.
Not really. Perhaps that was true in 2008 when the MCU started, but as the years go on, it gets less and less serious, yet continues to rake in more and more money. Turns out, people just like big action set pieces with large CGI budgets. Compare that to a movie like The Northman which is all about the hero's journey yet was a commercial failure, in part because it wasn't flashy enough to capture the general public's attention.
People are more simple-minded than you give them credit for.
Recently:
- Everything Everywhere All at Once - The Black Phone - The Northman - House of Gucci - Knives Out - Little Women - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - The Shape of Water
The blockbusters are such a huge part of the cultural landscape so that it’s easy to miss all the other film out there. But there’s really a lot of it!
I thought she looked fine in The Northman, but that also was a very dark/dimly lit movie.
The Northman is a 70M-90M budget movie. I guess that's how it got that kind of budget without ever having a chance at making back the money lol (it's just too weird).
Ooh, yeah, nice little art project. Well done.
A bit of a tangent, but gosh did I find Dancer in the Dark to be traumatizing. So sad! Bjork (whom I love) said she wouldn't do movies again after that one but I was happy to see her pop up in The Northman trailer.