Alicia Vikander

The Assessment

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Aaryan and Mia sitting up straight

Harold Pinter never wrote out-and-out sci-fi, but if he had done it might have looked like The Assessment. A queasy and uneasy excavation of people’s motivations, its tension stems from confrontations deferred, which break suddenly in discomfiting and absurdist ways. Yet it’s simple, in set-up and execution. It’s easy to imagine this punchy three-hander being performed in an experimental theatre in the upstairs room of a pub. Another Pinteresque aspect – it’s an actors’ drama rather than a director’s, and it calls for subtlety and sudden switching of gears from its performers, which Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel all manage with real precision – Olsen and Vikander get the best of … Read more

Firebrand

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Alicia Vikander as Katherine Parr

Unusually for a film concerning King Henry VIII of England, Firebrand is not interested in wife one (Catherine of Aragon) or wife two (Anne Boleyn). Instead focus is on the last of Henry’s six wives, Katherine Parr. And, no bones about it, she is the focus of this film, not the king. A history lesson. At the time this film is set Henry has broken politically but not entirely religiously with Rome. The Church of England has been established and Henry is its head. But because he’s relied so heavily on Protestants to support his break, Henry’s brand of Catholicism is on the defensive and the Protestants are on the prowl. It’s against … Read more

The Crown Jewels aka Kronjuvelerna

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Alicia Vikander as Fragancia

If this is the age of helicopter parenting and the Young Adult (YA) genre is its cultural manifestation, then 2011’s The Crown Jewels (Kronjuvelerna in the original Swedish) is as good an Exhibit A as you’ll find in any case for the prosecution. Life is full, absolutely full, of bear traps and kids need to know about them. People can be horrible. Open water can kill. Boyfriends can turn out gay. Mums can die. Dads can lose their legs. Rape can happen any time. Insanity lurks. Make sure you turn the gas off. The story is told in flashback, from a Swedish police interrogation room where a kindly inspector (Tomas von Brömssen) wants … Read more

The Green Knight

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The Green Knight

Sailing into the gap opened up by Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, The Green Knight is the latest addition to the crowded medieval/supernatural genre and writer/director David Lowery’s latest experiment in giving a hot genre a cool treatment. It’s Dev Patel as Gawain (emphasis on the first syllable, not the second), the would-be knight who steps forward after pagan spirit creature the Green Knight gatecrashes Christmas festivities and demands that one of the assembled satisfy his challenge – take a free pop at me, but I require that in one year from today I do back to you whatever you are about to do to me. Gawain gives this film … Read more