Netflix Review - Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (12)

The elves went too far!

The Gist: Icelandic fisherman Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrall) has nursed a dream of representing his country in the Eurovision Song Contest since childhood, when he witnessed ABBA's revelatory performance of Waterloo. With lifelong friend Sigrid (Rachel McAdams) he plays village pub gigs in Eurovision covers-band Fire Saga, their own neighbours threatening to boo them offstage, if they perform their own songs rather than Contest classic Ja Ja Ding Dong. Then several combined flukes of fate puts Lars' dream within reach, pitching him and Sigrid into the madness of Eurovision. Once there it's their proclivity for onstage disaster as much as ambitious fellow-contestants that threatens both their friendship and their shot at the big glittery prize.

The Juice: The Story of Fire Saga will probably play best to those who already know and love (in however ironic a sense) the real Eurovision Song Contest. Here in the UK it's been an annual TV event from way before I was born - ridiculed for years, before ultimately being embraced as a warm-hearted festival of kitsch. Will Ferrell treats it as such, having been introduced to the glitzy wonders of Eurovision through his Swedish wife and in-laws. As a result this is a celebration of a phenomenon way beyond satire, the movie's outlandish musical numbers only marginally more absurd than those of the actual competition.

In many senses this is as nuts-and-bolts a Will Ferrell comedy as you could get. Like Blades of Glory it's the story of a driven but disaster-prone dreamer repeatedly collaspsing on his face while striving for unlikely success. And Lars is the clumsy man-child we saw as far back as Elf and numerous times since. It's also got that tendency to ramble on too long in between its very recognisable plot beats.

What will likely keep you engaged is the film's sheer good nature and the affection is has for Eurovision's crazy brand of camp. Ferrell is never a chore to watch (2018's misguided Sherlock Holmes a best-forgotten exception), while McAdams is massively endearing as Sigrid - the wide-eyed innocent who still believes in the elves native to her country, while nursing a deep-seated but unrequited love for her best friend. She can hold a decent tune as well, even if supported digitally on the high notes by vocalist Molly Sanden. In fact the musical numbers are all well-crafted Eurovision-style pop-rock and they're delivered in appropriately over-the-top style - never more so than by the multiple scene-grabbing Dan Stevens as swaggering Russian chanteur Alexander Lemtov. But just possibly my favourite bits are those shot on location in Iceland, the brightly authentic folk setting a visually gorgeous counterpart to Eurovision's glitzy excesses.

(Your actual elfish dwellings)

The Judgement: 6.5/10. In terms of narrative structure - yes, you've seen it all before and had it told in a more focused manner. But in terms of heart and good-humour there's lots to enjoy in a comedy that lauds the Song Contest's earnestness and inclusivity, even while making gentle fun of it. If you're Eurovision-agnostic (or just plain Eurovision-clueless), it might well leave you scratching your head. If you're an aficionado of the actual Contest, however, you'll get it - and it'll put a big grin all over your face. In a year where Covid 19 did for the real thing, Fire Saga and their competitors aren't a bad substitute.

Netflix Review - Da 5 Bloods (18)

We fought an immoral war that wasn't ours for rights we didn't have.

The Gist: Four African American veterans of the Vietnam War return to that country half a century after having left both it and the body of their fallen squad leader - 'Stormin' Norman' - behind. Their purpose for going back 'in country' is to retrieve Norman's remains along with the hoard of gold bars they left buried close to his body - originally intended as payment to South Vietnamese allies. The scars of war run deep, never more so than in the mind of Paul (Delroy Lindo), whose PTSD-fuelled paranoid threatens the whole expedition. And how far they can trust the businessman who has agreed to help them smuggle the gold out of the country is a whole other cause for concern. For these men the war turns out to be far from over...

The Juice: Da 5 Bloods is a whole lot of movie, created on a scale that makes you long to watch it on a big screen. As director Spike Lee's follow-up to BlacKkKlansman it's an epic of African American history and no less confrontational than its 2018 predecessor, while also providing a tense, thrilling and viscerally bloody jungle adventure. The gold fever that threatens to undermine these Bloods' better intentions is reminiscent of Bogart classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the thriller elements are nerve-jangling, but this story always comes back to a bigger picture - of men whose lives should have mattered more to their country, whether in Vietnam or back home. It tackles the unspeakable horrors of the historic war too, confronting its audience with the most emotionally jarring news footage of the era and refusing to flinch from the imagery, however much we're inclined to do so.

In terms of its craft this is as ambitious and experimental a film as Lee has ever made. The widescreen shots of modern Ho Chi Minh City - gorgeous and colour-saturated - shrink to a boxy aspect ratio for flashback sequences involving the original '5'. The ageing actors all play themselves in pulsing action sequences from late '60s Vietnam, Black Panther's Chadwick Boseman the only youthful face among them as Stormin' Norman; no Irishman-style de-aging here, but this narrative decision makes the moments seem dreamlike, the surviving comrades recalling a spiritually-inclined warrior more in tune with his history than any of them.

The Bloods themselves convey intense camaraderie from their airport reunion and continue to sell the bond and break of these war-torn individuals, as they revisit horrors they've never truly left behind. Clarke Peters's Otis is the voice of empathy and reason throughout (Peters will always be The Wire's Lester Freamon to me) and Isiah Whitlock Jr brings an enjoyably earthy humour to Melvin, but it's Lindo who has the meatiest role as damaged Paul. Sympathetic, repellent and heartbreaking on repeat, he's a powerful study in the worst that war can do to a man. If there's a beatific glow surrounding Norman as remembered by his friends, Paul is the portrait of a man in his own private Hell. 

The Judgement: 8/10. Da 5 Bloods is a more sprawling affair than the tightly focused BlacKkKlansman, like a deli sandwich with so many ingredients that the bread can scarcely hold them all together. It also signposts one or two of its most explosive moments more than it should. That said, this reenvisioning of the 'Nam movie is full of bona fide Lee brilliance, its challenging aspects born as much of recent times as of the War itself. While the director has much to say about the conflict's repercussions (both for GIs and for Vietnam itself), it also places the Bloods' grim adventures in the broader flow of black American experience from the Civil Rights movement right up to now. It's not Lee at his absolute best, but with butt-clenching action adventure and searing political relevance, it comes pretty damn close. 

   

Short-Film Review - The Tell Tale Heart

This is the cause here... It is the beating of his hideous heart.

The Tell Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 mini-tale of obsession, murder and mind-shredding guilt, is as Gothic as classic literature gets - a lurid tale with an unreliable narrator who pleads his innocence even while bathed (metaphorically and otherwise) in the blood of his victim. With its blending of crime and horror it's also a precursor to the pulpy noir stories that first proved popular half a century later. Director McClain Lindquist gets all of this in his deliciously deranged new short, one that retells Poe's story with a bold and bloody relish that would surely make the 19th century horror master smile.

Sonny Grimsley plays The Narrator, a modern take on Poe's murderous protagonist, but one psychologically rooted in a bygone pre-forensics era. Like the literary character he's carer to an elderly man who he claims to love and knows to be good, meanwhile being driven mad by a fixation with the ailing gentleman's vulture-like eye. When two detectives investigate reports of 'screaming bloody murder', they are welcomed by a man whose mannered grace belies gnawing guilt, along with a mortal terror that no deed - however wicked - can lay to rest.

Lindquist's best decision here is to embrace pure madness with every neatly structured frame and every precisely integrated sound of his devious little movie. The mansion in which the blood-letting occurs is Gothic to its foundations (the Knives Out family home sprang to mind), with richly detailed interiors and a glossy cinematic sheen that shows to best effect the classiness and the gore. But it's what he and his team do within their precision-designed setting that provide this short with its uncanny edge.

It's all about the psychology here - whether the antique clock-tick that has arguably driven our narrator deranged to begin with, or the visceral images that haunt him in the aftermath of his grim act. This simple story has been crafted into a dark and probing study of insanity, shot through with moments of pure horror. Lindquist knows every cross-cutting, shadow-casting trick in the genre playbook and uses them to juicy effect, tossing in a few unique visual flourishes of his own. He also understands when to let the camera linger at visually unsettling moments, and has the practical effects at hand to back it up. It's all steeped in a disorienting soundscape too, one that compliments Grimsley's enjoyably ripe and glowering central performance.

The Tell Tale Heart (2020) takes all that makes classic Gothic horror so enjoyable - its melodrama, it rich symbolism, its deep-dive into the murkier realms of the human psyche - and cranks them up full-volume. It's also got a deviant sense of fun in keeping with its narrator's sheer delusion. Twenty minutes inside this guy's head makes for a deliciously shuddering nightmare. It also bodes well for these filmmakers' futures - in horror or wherever else they choose to ply their cunning craft. They know their movie grammar well, and use it to deliver a story as pulsing with menace as the words Poe once inked onto his page.