Thor is back, and the God of Thunder’s got a new gang. Lady Sif and the Warriors Three are still about, but (courtesy of the increasingly confused Marvel Cinematic Universe) Thor’s now attended by some new celestial hangers-on. Say hello to the Muse of Stilted Dialogue, the Sibyl of Utterly Predictable Action Sequences and the Demon of Irrelevant Villains, coming together to make a film so grotesquely misshapen that it’ll actually make you look forward to all the plagiarised bits. Sort of.
Norwegian islands play host to some pretty dark events. Long before the horrors of summer 2011, Bastøy Island was the home of a now infamous prison colony for troublesome boys, where dire conditions led to an uprising so overwhelming that the Navy was called in to control it – one of only two occasions in Norway’s history when its military forces were turned on its own people. To recreate all the drama of this cataclysmic event is, you would think, enough for any movie. Not so King Of Devil’s Island, which ultimately pulls out more stops than it can handle in its attempt to not just tell the story of Bastøy, but to make you think – and think deep.
A film in which most of the cast get to have sex with each other. Must have been a hard sell.
Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg both give admirably miserable performances in Melancholia; a shoe-in for Film Most Likely To Make You Top Yourself 2011. Bleak, beautiful, and oh so very Von Trier, Melancholia offers an alternative to your run of the mill blast-tastic apocalypse – it turns out there’s going to be a lot of horses lying down.
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