A young man with a heart of gold, untapped talent and responsibility: she always puts others first. Hardly Oscar-winning material. At the very least, one could imagine the core performance to be amazing. Miss Daisy needed a black driver, and Rose a very large ship. But the closest are deaf: for her talent and literally. There’s the clincher.
Channeling of Tupac
They’ve been listening to too much heavy metal Metal lords (April 8 on Netflix). Oh, you thought I was talking about Coda, whose winner of Best Picture was overshadowed by a game of Rock Paper Scissors that ended with Willard Carroll Smith II shouting what he imagined a black man from his wife’s hometown of Baltimore would say – like his childhood friend Tupac Shakur actually.
Excuse the cheap Coda joke – with a budget of 10 million US dollars, it is the second cheapest film to win the biggest prize, after Moonlight, which cost only 1.5. Regular readers will know that this column is occupied by the Oscars. The truth is that the winter editions are so much easier to write because that is when all the graduates are released. Come March / April, and the lock is ‘sprung’ on all the duds that are looking for easier picking in the box.
Caught by your talent
This month, however, is an exception, as it is mostly A-Class deals along with promising action movies. Building a bridge between the two is The unbearable weight of massive talent (April 21; 77 on Metacritic) with Nicolas Cage as… Nicolas Cage, placed in a situation where a superfan turns out to be a Mexican badass (the always reliable Pedro Pascal) wanted by the CIA. So this is Curb Your Enthusiasm, but applied to a thriller not a comedy. But since we are supposed to assume that people like Superman or James Bond could conceivably die … it’s hard to imagine that this could create the necessary danger. Hilarity, yes.
Many of you may be unaware of the true story behind it Nitram (April 7; 83), but it gripped Australia when it had become sober. Caleb Landry Jones and a resurrected Anthony LaPaglia, who is always better in Oz than the United States, stand out in the story of a young mass murderer who killed 35 on a lazy Sunday afternoon in tourist Tasmania in 1996. The country was so drunk that there were only five sober journals back to the evening news, and four of them were sports commentators. One of them ended up making a Top 10 Worst Australian Massacres Ever segment.
More soothing in comparison, but no less appreciated Bergmans ø (April 7; 81) with Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread), the thought-provoking tale of two writers on an inspiring Swedish island whose work begins to obscure fiction; and come on come on (April 21; 82), the fourth film by Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners), a sweet guardianship tale starring Joaquim Phoenix as the set uncle.
Incest in the crown
Fans of the Harry Potter universe will welcome you Fantastic Beasts 3: The Secrets of Dumbledore (April 7; Not Released Worldwide), where Mads Mikkelsen has replaced Johnny Depp as dark wizard Grindelwald.
A Dane is also on board to play the villain The Norwegian (April 13; NRW), which Viking enthusiasts have already praised for its time-typical appearance. Alexander Skarsgård has Claes Bang in his sights in this revenge story, but check out all the stars! Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Anya Taylor-Joy and Björk are only half the story.
Danish-American actor Viggo Morgensentogether with Colin Farrell, gets dressed to play one of the rescuers in Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives (April 28; NRW), the story of the famous rescue of a Thai football team in 2018, but the contribution of the Danish divers Claus Rasmussen and Ivan Karadzic has been ignored.
Elsewhere, 65 (April 28; NRW) is a muted Sony dinosaur thriller starring Adam Driver (the smart money is on this one to be postponed to next year). The lost city (April 28; 60) is a Romancing the Stone replica featuring a toyboy spin starring Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. The one in between (April 8 on Netflix), a lightweight space starring Joey King, will likely be streamed 100 million times and hailed a success.
Finally, Mother’s Sunday (April 28; 64) is a war of attrition, upstairs and downstairs, starring Josh O’Connor and Olivia Colman – not as lovers… it would be perverse to play Charles and Queen Elizabeth in The Crown! Again she plays his mother.
Wired about this
Over in TV country, we look forward We own this city (April 26 on HBO Max), which takes the writers of The Wire back to Baltimore, their favorite treadmill, to take a look at corruption within the police force. British dysfunctional spy series Slow horses (published on Apple; 78), with Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas, and Tokyo Vice (April 8 on HBO Max; 75), the first episode of which is directed by Michael Mann, also looks very promising.
David E Kelley anthology series Anatomy of a scandal (April 15 on Netflix; 48) starring Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend is described as “a series designed to portray various elite class scandals in the UK” – just like A Very British Scandal at the time, though narrative if it is fictional. The critics are not impressed.
By staying in the UK, critics have not had the opportunity to rate comedy series Hard cell (April 12 on Netflix), which will either be a baptism of fire or sink-as-a-stone moment for the career of creator and multi-role star Catherine Tate, Baby (April 25 on HBO Max) el Joe vs. Carole (April 14 on CMore), the first fictional tale of the Tiger King story. More are likely to follow.
Return series include Rather call Saul (S6; April 19), Russian doll (S2; April 20) and Ozark (S4B; April 29) on Netflix; and Wellington Paranormal (S4; April 1), Stewardesses (S2; April 22), Three busy Debras (S2; April 25), Blikstjerne (S3; April 12), Home finances (S2; April 29), Barry (S3; April 25) and Mayans MC (S4; April 25) on HBO Max.
There is a long list of documentaries without explanation needed: Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the pedophile (April 7 on CMore), Jimmy Saville: A British Horror Story (April 6 on Netflix), The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes (April 27 on Netflix) and Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History (April 2 on HBO Max).
The latter is narrated by Stephen Fry, whose omnipresence has begun to harden. Let’s hope we don’t say the same about Chris Rock in 12 months.
Source: The Nordic Page