Movie Review -- Overlord

  Remember Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Wasn't that movie cool? Don't you wish there were more historical-fantasy movies like that that didn't take themselves so seriously and instead just focused on being fun? Fear not, comrades, because Overlord has got you covered. Covered in the blood and guts of Nazi scum, that is!

  Overlord takes place on the eve of D-Day and follows a squad of American paratroopers dropping into France to assist with the Allied invasion at Normandy. After an exhilarating opening scene – that reminds me of Band of Brothers, but way more scary – the men find themselves approaching their objective, but they soon stumble upon a more gruesome discovery. Gruesomeness and violence follows, the good old typical Nazisploitation stuff.

  Julius Avery directs this frightening adventure and he does horror well. The tone shifts handily between exciting action, mild humour, uneasy suspense, and gripping tension in this film that carries itself seriously but not too seriously. Overlord is also a rather gory film and its special effects get the point across nicely.

  Needless to say, a film about Nazi supersoldier experiments gone wrong requires a little suspension of disbelief. Overlord isn't a historically accurate film by any means, especially when you consider that (A) the US Army in this film isn't segregated, (B) it apparently only took these troops three months to go from unenlisted civilians to fully trained, combat-ready soldiers on the front lines, and (C) wounded troops are seemingly left on the front lines to just tough it out.

  The film also leaves us with a few unanswered questions, such as why paratroopers in the middle of enemy territory aren't being quiet. What happened to the experimented people that weren't in the church, like the aunt? Or was the aunt the only one the Germans released? Why did that German motorcyclist return to his comrades when he knew he really shouldn't have?

  In spite of these shortcomings, Overlord remains a thrilling experience well worth the time of anyone who likes horror movies, war movies, science fiction movies, B-movies, or any combination thereof. It's a lot of fun and it's the closest we're going to get to a Wolfenstein movie. I try not to publish really short reviews like this but there really isn't much else to say about Overlord. It's a good film and if it sounds interesting to you then you oughta watch it.

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Movie Review -- The Girl in the Spider's Web

  Remember back in my Sicario: Day of the Soldado review (this past July) I said that there were three movies this year – Sicario 2, Tomb Raider, and Venom – I was going to watch out of pure curiosity in how the studios were going to pull them off? It turns out that I should've made that number four instead because as I found out only a couple months ago another movie was being made of the Millennium series of books, The Girl in the Spider's Web. Anyone who reads Arnold's Benediction knows that 2011's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one of my favourite movies ever. Can The Girl in the Spider's Web match the high standard the previous film established? Let's take a look.

  TGITSW serves as a soft reboot of TGWTDT, with an all-new cast, with a new director and crew, and taking place at least three years after the original (with a slight retcon of Lisbeth Salander's backstory). Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander have become estranged after he cashed in on his experiences with her to publish some best-selling articles that may or may not have made her famous (the movie doesn't really make it clear). But the two must now work together to stop some bad guys from stealing some computer program that allows its user to hack into the world's missile control systems. That's right, the series has made the jump from mystery-thriller to espionage-action-thriller. Admittedly, I have not read the book this film is based on but this type of action story seems very out of place when compared to Dragon Tattoo. I've seen people unfavourably comparing Spider's Web to 2016's Jason Bourne and while I don't think this film is nearly that dull it is easy to see similarities in tone, the focus mostly on one character (in this film Blomkvist has been reduced to a mere side character in favour of Lisbeth), and in the action scenes. It's a plot that features tons of vibrating phones, people not paying attention to things in plain sight, and momentary lapses of judgment from characters who are supposed to be smart. For example, why did that whiz kid who just saw [SPOILER] die answer a phone call from [SPOILER] even though he knows that dangerous people are trying to find him? In the words of Carl Brutananadilewski, “you're stupid for a genius.”

  As mentioned earlier, Lisbeth is the sole main character this time around and she's played by Claire Foy. While Foy's performance isn't as haunting or nuanced as Rooney Mara's in Dragon Tattoo, it's still very well done. Instead of a private investigator who keeps to herself, Lisbeth is now a hacker-for-hire vigilante who goes out of her way to reap vengeance on men who mistreat women. The new version of Blomkvist, portrayed by Sverrir Gudnason, is way younger and less prominent than in previous movies. Gudnason's performance is OK, I guess. The only other character of note is the main villain who is rather dull and barely makes any facial expressions (possibly due to her hard-to-spot eyebrows).

  Like a lot of reboots, TGITSW cleans house. Without the likes of David Fincher, Jeff Cronenweth, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross Spider's Web's cinematography, compositions, and musical scoring have a very different, much less pronounced style. Opening credits aside, director Fede Alvarez does his own thing. Really the only things of note are a couple long tracking shots, plentiful handheld camera shots, and shaky fight scenes with really choppy editing (speaking of Bourne...).

  All in all, The Girl in the Spider's Web reminds me a lot of Sicario 2 in that they're both artistically downgraded, action-packed sequels to critically lauded, stylish films; they don't stack up with the originals but are entertaining enough. But on the other hand Spider's Web – although I did enjoy it – was only half as captivating as Dragon Tattoo and is a debatably unnecessary film. I don't think audiences are necessarily against another Millennium film, they probably just wanted Fincher to direct it and they wanted it six years ago when the books were still popular. That might explain why Spider's Web is doing so badly at the box office; the cinema was about 3/4 empty when I saw it on opening night! Unfortunately it seems like the time for more English-language Millennium films has come and gone and that this series' continuation can officially be written off as a lost cause.

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