Film Review of the Week

Horror

Nosferatu (15)

Review: In literature and on screen, vampires are often depicted as sensual and alluring creatures of the night, armed with the power of hypnosis to woo potential victims into a compliant fugue and quash resistance to tapered dentistry plunging into a jugular vein. Director Robert Eggers’ visually resplendent remake of FW Murnau’s 1922 silent Gothic melodrama, itself an unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that resulted in a copyright infringement lawsuit from the author’s estate, employs similar seduction techniques.

From the mesmerising dream sequence that opens the film, Nosferatu ravishes the senses, beginning with Jarin Blaschke’s stunning colour-drained cinematography that relies on flickering candlelight, firelight and moonlight to illuminate actors’ faces and conceal horror in the shadows. Occasional splashes of suppressed red herald the inevitable bloodletting.

Production designer Craig Lathrop and costume designer Linda Muir are skilled collaborators from Eggers’ previous films, conveying the decaying finery of 19th-century Europe as composer Robin Carolan’s elegiac orchestral score marries mournful strings with choral swells. Eggers’ script is a valentine to the 1922 picture but dilutes the sustained menace of Murnau’s vision, concealing actor Bill Skarsgard beneath layers of prosthetics as the titular Transylvanian aristocrat with a booming east European accent as thick as black treacle. Some of the supporting performances are left to shiver in the cold and never thaw out but Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp are handsomely matched as newlyweds in the vice-like grip of a vampire’s obsession.

In 1838 Germany, real estate broker Herr Knock (Simon McBurney) entreats his employee Thomas Hutter (Hoult) to travel to the snow-laden Carpathian mountains to secure the signature of enigmatic nobleman Count Orlok (Skarsgard) on a property sale in the German city of Wisborg. Thomas leaves his blushing bride Ellen (Depp) in the care of good friend Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his wife Anna (Emma Corrin).

The young man barely survives the exhausting trip to Europe and stumbles home to find his beautiful wife Ellen driven to delirium by a telepathic bond to the Count. “The night demon has supped of your good wife’s blood,” pithily surmises occult expert Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe). The maniacal medic conceives a hare-brained plan to break Orlok’s hold over Ellen before the nocturnal predator consummates their unholy connection.

Nosferatu exsanguinates substance to dazzle us with style, paying homage to Murnau’s film by replicating the striking imagery of the Count’s gnarled shadow gliding upstairs and along corridors towards unsuspecting prey. McBurney flirts enthusiastically with madness while Dafoe chews hungrily on dialogue that teeters on risible: “I have seen things that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!” Compared to Eggers’ terrifying 2015 folk horror The Witch, scares are mild and infrequent.

Action

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (PG)

Review: Two Jim Carreys for the price of one in returning director Jeff Fowler’s turbo-charged threequel sounds like a Boxing Day deal to grasp with both paws. Ultimately, you get what you pay for in Sonic The Hedgehog 3, a wholly satisfying resolution to the feud between the eponymous blue hedgehog and his outrageously moustachioed nemesis, crammed to bursting with dizzying action sequences and a wholesome message about trusting your moral compass. Screenwriters Pat Casey, Josh Miller and John Whittington hark back to the video games for a conventional tale of good versus evil that empowers Carrey to make merry as mad scientist Dr Robotnik and his long-lost grandfather, two chips off the same old block of virtuoso comic showboating.

While Carrey doesn’t unhinge as furiously as The Mask, he shamelessly pickpockets scenes from digitally rendered critters and sneaks in an emotional wallop just as the special effects wizardry goes into hyperdrive. In stark contrast, Keanu Reeves underplays his vengeful spiny antagonist with a slosh of righteous fury. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter’s adoptive parents are surplus to requirements and are crudely inserted into a climactic showdown with other perfunctory human cast. Following the template of previous films, Fowler pays fan service with additional scenes in the end credits that reveal the next franchise character bound for the big screen.

Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) and guardians Tom (Marsden) and Maddie Wachowski (Sumpter) celebrate the anniversary of the blue hedgehog’s arrival on Earth with flying fox Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey) and red echidna Knuckles (Idris Elba). Director Rockwell (Krysten Ritter) from the Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) rudely interrupts the festivities. She is on urgent government business to recruit the anthropomorphic trio for a daredevil mission.

Red and black striped hedgehog Shadow (Reeves) has escaped maximum security containment on Prison Island in Tokyo Bay after 50 years in suspended animation. Shadow is in cahoots with Professor Gerald Robotnik (Carrey), grandfather of Sonic’s defeated arch-nemesis Dr Ivo Robotnik (Carrey again), and the diabolical duo intend to avenge the death of Gerard’s granddaughter Maria (Alyla Browne). To avert catastrophe, Sonic forges an uneasy alliance with Ivo and his sycophant sidekick, Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub). A reinvigorated Robotnik shoehorns himself into a snazzy new suit (“Think Elvis, circa 1976…”) and prepares to lop a creaking branch off his family tree, but mad genius blood is thicker than water.

By virtue of Carrey’s rubber-faced revelry, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 spins and somersaults marginally above its rambunctious predecessor, striking an appealing balance between CGI carnage and tender-hearted sentiment. The script sledgehammers key messages of compassion and collaboration. “Remember to listen to your heart,” coos Marsden in impeccably lit close-up. Without the wattage of Carrey’s dual performances, Fowler’s picture – and the series as a whole – would be running close to empty.

Romance

We Live In Time (15)

Review: In 2012, playwright Nick Payne debuted his metaphysical love story Constellations, which elegantly charts the burgeoning romance between a quantum physicist and a beekeeper, who meet at a barbecue and tumble through a multiverse of relationship possibilities including one timeline punctuated by terminal illness. A rumoured film adaptation never materialised but more than a decade later, Payne revisits key motifs from his award-winning stage work in the screenplay for We Live In Time.

Galvanised by electrifying chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, director John Crowley’s superior tearjerker is a chronologically fractured meditation on mortality, which invites us to contemplate the invisible stopwatch that dictates when our brief sojourn in this chaotic, overwhelming world must end. A deluge of tears are shed on screen, predominantly by Garfield, and expect to hear sobs echoing across cinemas as characters stoically wrestle with the ramifications of a stage three ovarian cancer diagnosis.

Payne’s decision to pinball through time denies the film a conventional crescendo but does allow him to juxtapose scenes of rage, regret and reminiscence. He also repositions a hilarious and heartwarming centrepiece – the birth of a baby girl in a petrol station toilet aided by two encouraging staff (Kerry Godliman, Nikhil Parmar) – to the dewy-eyed final act. Scheduling two major life events for the characters on the same date to create conflict feels like dramatic contrivance rather than credible coincidence.

Breakfast cereal brand IT master Tobias (Garfield) moves in with his architect father Reginald (Douglas Hodge) to emotionally regroup after his marriage falls apart. In the process of signing divorce papers, Tobias is involved in a bizarre car accident with ambitious chef Almut (Pugh). A giddy, whirlwind romance, set in motion by a chance collision on a motorway, turns both of their lives upside down but feverish thoughts of the future are curtailed by Almut’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

Fortune initially favours the lovers and they welcome a cherubic daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), into the world after Almut goes into remission. However, the cancer metastasises and the chef faces a stark choice between aggressive courses of chemotherapy and surgery, with no guarantee of success, or six months of treatment-free memories including a chance to compete at the biennial Bocuse d’Or – the Olympics of international gastronomy – with her commis Jade (Lee Braithwaite).

We Live In Time presents an artfully composed menu of misunderstandings, reconciliations and self-reflection. Garfield and Pugh are the star ingredients, fiercely committed to baring their characters’ souls including a steamy scene of tasteful nudity with a generously proportioned pack of Jaffa cakes. Payne’s script doesn’t defy expectations or conjure medical miracles but is garnished with impeccably polished dialogue that warrants every second of our precious time.