First up this month is Norwegian horror/thriller Viking Wolf. Liv Berg (Liv Mjönes) moves to a new town with her 17 year old daughter, Thale (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne), when she gets a job in the local police force. Thale attends a party with her new friends but a fellow student is killed there and it looks like the killer might be a wolf. There is nothing startlingly new in Viking Wolf. A moody teen girl, the resourceful female cop and weird old guy who warns everyone about werewolves are all present. But, despite some dubious CGI, it works pretty well. There are a couple of scary moments and director Stig Svendsen keeps everything moving agreeably.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Spanish crime drama Infiesto is set in March 2020 when the country was in a ‘State of Alarm’ because of Covid. It stars Isak Férriz and Iria del Río and two cops who travel to a village called Piloña after a missing woman has been found. As they investigate, they uncover a group of men who have been abducting kids for a bizarre reason.
This has a similar feeling to the Baztan Trilogy, with its gloomy Spanish setting. Whilst it does not have the depth of those films, it is an impressive police procedural. The identity of the leader of the group might be pretty obvious but that does not stop writer/director Patxi Amezcua bringing a fair deal of suspense to the proceedings. The background of the pandemic also works well and del Rio is very convincing.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
One of the highest profile releases and timed for Valentine’s Day is Your Place or Mine. Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher star as best friends Debbie and Peter. They slept together once 20 years previously but are now living in opposite ends of the country, Debbie in L.A and Peter in New York. They agree to swap houses for a week so that Debbie can complete her college course and Peter can look after her son.
You certainly could not claim that there is anything new in this film. The ploy of keeping the couple to be apart for most of the film has most famously been used in Sleepless in Seattle and the arc of the plot is easy to predict. However, the cast elevates it above something you could watch on Movies 24 on a Wednesday afternoon.
Kutcher is going through a career revival after his brilliant turn in Vengeance last year, and Witherspoon breezes through the movie in a charming way. The solid supporting cast includes Steve Zahn as Witherspoon’s eccentric neighbour and Tig Notaro as Alice, and old friend of Debbie and Peter. Although it becomes increasingly puzzling and distracting to see Alice holding a takeaway coffee cup in every single scene she appears in, whatever the setting or time of day!
Rating: 7 out of 10
The always impressive Ashley Madekwe stars as Neve in The Strays. She seems to have the perfect life, living in the suburbs with her husband and two kids and working as a deputy head at a public school. But she is hiding a secret from her family that is about to be exposed. There are effective moments in The Strays, particularly when we go over previous events from an alternative viewpoint. But, there are also a few issues. The opening scene gives too much away, the racial discrimination theme is under-powered and the final act is very unconvincing. As well as Madekwe, the cast boasts Bukky Bakray and an under used Lucy Lemann, so the performances are good but the film is underwhelming.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Also on Netflix this month
The Price of Family is a comedy about a brother and sister moving to a big city, leaving their parents alone and bored in their absence. This is thankfully a lot less frantic and overacted than most Italian comedies but it is also completely unfunny.
I am sure that Mission Majnu will go down well in its native India. A spy in the 1970’s goes under cover in Pakistan to expose an illicit nuclear weapons programme. It is very black and white, with the Indian protagonists depicted as heroes. It is also poorly acted and badly paced.
True Spirit is the true story of 16 year old Australian sailor Jessica Watson , who in 2009 became the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe. This is solid stuff but it has few surprises and too many flashbacks to Jessica’s childhood. Teagan Croft is convincing enough in the lead role but the acting honours go to Anna Paquin who plays her mother.
In Stromboli, a newly divorced Dutch woman goes to a retreat on the titular Italian island. This is a bit all over the place tonally, veering from knockabout comedy to drama with little warning so it does not really work. Elise Schaap is terrific in the lead role though.
Dark October tells the true story of 4 Nigerian university students who were killed in a mob attack. It should have been powerful but was just too amateurishly made.
You People cast is bursting at the seams with famous actors. Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Nia Long, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Duchovny, Rhea Perlman and the great Elliott Gould. However, this culture clash comedy about a young black woman dating a Jewish man despite opposition from both families is a bit of a bloated mess. It barely raises a smirk.
Norway naively decided to remain neutral at the start of World War 2, supplying both Germany and the UK with the iron ore required to make weapons. Inevitably, the Germans invaded the country in order to obtain exclusive use of the resource. The Norwegian fight back is documented in Narvik: Hitler’s First Defeat. This is one of the lesser known stories from the war but this film really does not do it justice. When concentrating on the military strategy and in the rare action scenes, it is fine, However, the low-budget means that captions have to be used numerous times to advance the story, and too much time is spent on one family and their fight for survival. The message towards the end that it is okay to betray your country in wartime to save a loved-one also leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
I don’t think I have seen a film set in an Indonesian high school before but there is nothing new in the homogeneous Dear David. The life of student Laras, changes completely, with the expected results, when her fantasy blog about fellow student David is leaked to everyone at school. Pretty dull stuff.
Did we need a sequel to last year’s Squared Love? Probably not, but we get it anyway with Squared Love All Over Again. Adrianna Chlebicka and Mateusz Banasiuk return for this latest instalment and they seem a little less irritating this time, so it is a slight improvement on the original.
All The Places is a tired Mexican comedy about a brother and sister going on a road trip, It takes far too long to get going.
A Sunday Affair is a romantic comedy about a love triangle that only briefly comes alive during a train set scene.
Call Me Chihiro is a strange film about a former sex worker working in a takeaway food store in a Japanese city. Kasumi Arimura is quite compelling in the lead role but the supporting characters are uniformly annoying and the story rambles aimlessly for over two hours,
Ratings out of 10:
The Price of Family: 3
Mission Majnu: 2.5
True Spirit: 5.5
Stromboli: 5
Dark October: 3
You People: 3.5
Narvik: Hitler’s First Defeat: 5
Dear David: 2.5
Squared Love All Over Again: 4
All The Places: 3
A Sunday Affair: 4
Call Me Chihiro: 4