Troll Hunter, though, gets its pitch exactly right. “TROLL HUNTER!!!” shouts the poster, in yellow, with a gritty picture of Hans The Troll Hunter’s well-defended Land Rover driving towards the legs of a truly gigantic troll. That’s what we like to see. Gets straight to the point. This is a film about a man who hunts trolls, and the trolls aren’t fucking around. That’s what it is.

That tagline, guys.

Now, I’d read a few précis of André Øvredal‘s film before I went to see it, which is something I generally avoid doing because I like to go to a film all clean of bias, but it would have been hard to remove my firmly-lodged desire to see this film, because fuck I love monsters. All the opinions I’d read started with something like, “I didn’t expect this to be hand-held-camera Blair Witch mockumentary style!” so naturally, I expected that.

However, given that information, I expected it to be a horror film about some kids who make a film about trolls.

It’s not. It’s a film about trolls.

It is literally a film all about trolls. It’s not even a horror film about trolls. It’s just about trolls. You get to know about all the different sorts of troll, how long they live, what they eat, how long their gestation period is, and what they like to do with car tyres. It’s also a sensitive portrait of the hunter, Hans (Otto Jespersen), and his lifelong symbiotic relationship with them and their territorial warfare. He’s sort of like the stoic, outdoorsy, very smelly grandpa you always wanted. He’s not your typical big, ripply, macho action hero. He’s like a grumpy, landmine-collecting Sir David Attenborough. With a beard. And landmines. I found myself, as the credits rolled to In The Hall Of The Mountain King, wanting to go to Norway immediately and try and find him and look at trolls with him.

The whole film runs, as you can imagine from something that’s shot on a hand-held camera ostensibly by film students, completely devoid of soundtrack, but that somehow makes it more immediate, more intimate: it’s peppered with little details that make it feel very real, and all the people in it less like characters that have been written and cast, but more like ordinary people, with their own failings and idiosyncrasies.  To illustrate this I need to give a mild spoiler away, so skip the rest of this paragraph if you’re invested in being entirely spoiler free! In the first troll chase, the sound techie girl (Johanna Mørck) is lost, and we presume her dead, having possibly been eaten by a ten-foot-tall troll. But she emerges from the forest, wild-eyed and grinning, practically crying with delight that the fairy-tale monsters are really real.¹ She’s neither mangled, nor screaming, nor in need of comfort, rescue or first-aid – she’s absolutely thrilled, and still clutching her boom mike. For a film that’s all about monsters and the man that hunts them, this is a very human film.

It’s also hilarious, which was another thing I wasn’t expecting. I laughed like an audience-disturbing drain at some points (seriously, never go to see a film with me, I’m awful) and clapped like a delighted child at others (see? awful). The humour and humanity help it feel true, which in turn makes the danger feel really dangerous and the tension feel really tense. It’s deeply engrossing for it.

The only thing is, it’s so different from any other film currently on offer – and indeed different from similar shaky-cam freak-fests that preceded it (hello, Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, I’m looking at you) – that it might take some viewers a little while to get into. You have to adapt. You don’t really watch it the same way that you usually watch films. It helps by giving you a soundtrack-free plain text introduction to the film as being a collection of recordings anonymously dropped off at a studio, which certainly got me into the right mindset, but your mileage may vary.

Basically, this is what’d happen if I was told to make a horror film about werewolves. It’d just end up as a film about werewolves and what they do. This is a film, then, that is about trolls and what they do. It will make you want to go and look at trolls. (But don’t go if you’re a Christian because they can smell you.)

Not pictured: the Jainist cameraman.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• It’s all about the monsters and how they fit into human life, and if you like monsters, folklore and learning about different cultures, you’ll love it
• It’s pretty much unique in its combination of how it’s shot and what it offers
• It’s really, unexpectedly funny
• The people feel real, solid and …people-y
• TROLLS!!!!!!!

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• I don’t know, you might take exception to the recurring theme of them being able to smell (and liking to eat) Christians
• Shaky-cam doesn’t agree with everyone (I found it challenging to watch in parts)
• I might be in the cinema, periodically shrieking and weeping and no-one needs that

1. This bit made me cry. WHO’S SURPRISED :D

Other thing is, there’s talk of rape in this, too.

Now, I went to see The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito) on my own, which was possibly a mistake, the reason for which you’ll realise as you read on.  I have a little snippet of anxiety left over from school whereby if I go to do something alone, I’ll be afraid I’m in the wrong place.  I’ll get my ticket, read the ticket, go to the place it says on the ticket, but I’ll still be a bit scared that I’m somehow, magically, in the wrong place.

So there I sat in the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, nervously clutching my mug of tea (THEY LET YOU BRING FUCKING TEA INTO THE FUCKING CINEMA OH MY GOD HEAVEN IN AN AUDITORIUM!!!!), wondering if, when the film started, it’d be the right one or not.

Ten minutes of sumptuous interiors, high-angled shots, hyper-saturated film and an onslaught of seething, brooding madness in, I realised with great satisfaction that yep, I’m watching a goddamned Pedro Almodóvar film.  That man has his favourite toys, tropes and themes, doesn’t he?  This is another film that watches class through a fish-eye lens, focussing on the life of a very well-off, in-demand surgeon (Antonio Banderas), who is currently undertaking research into the growth of synthetic human skin for the treatment of burns sufferers.  He has “help” and a housekeeper and everything.

Also, he keeps a young woman (Elena Anaya) as a pet in a locked room and does experiments on her.

This is just the set-up.  This is all revealed in the first extravagant slice of immaculately tailored, dressed and designed film.  It goes further. Every single character in this film is broken in some fundamental way.  Or if they don’t start out that way, they become that way.

The only truly sympathetic character, I found, was that of the housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes).  She’s stalwart and practical, caring and protective, and I wish she survived ’til the end, but she doesn’t.  I was surprised, actually, that there were any purely sympathetic characters at all in this film – it’s Almodóvar, no-one is innocent ever!  And, indeed, she is the only fully likeable, empathic person in the film.  Everyone else is absolutely horrible in some ways, and deeply sympathetic in others, leaving you with absolutely no bloody idea what to make of them overall.

So far, so Almodóvar.

Now, while I was watching this, absorbing it like a sponge, my thoughts drifted – as they are wont to do – to the rest of the Almodóvar canon.  My favourite film of his by a long shot is Bad Education, and if you’ve not watched it, you really must – but he really does have this ongoing obsession (theme, exploration, whatever you want to call it) with transgender people, and the process of transforming gender presentation, and whether or not transformation redeems.  He’s also good at casting real trans* people as transgender characters, which is something that Hollywood has yet to realise is a thing that they should fucking do, too.  “Huh,” I thought, with this in mind, watching Antonio Banderas’s distressingly hot surgeon-gone-mad leaking deep-eyed insanity all over the cinema, “There’s no trans* folk in this!  Weird, for Almodóvar, to not at least have one of us.”

And then everyone was trans* and everything hurt.

No, I’m serious.  Holy shit.  Yes!  Indeed, ALL film literature on this is meticulously devoid of spoilers (and I’m ruining that now, hahar!) but the pretty young thing Scary Dr. Richard is keeping as a toy/pet/experiment/wife replacement/wall-to-wall security camera work of art (I’m not even joking) is the bloke that raped his daughter and has been surgically rebuilt to look like a cis woman as punishment.

Now, before I explore that comprehensive cinematographic clusterfuck in more detail, I’m going to make a quick aside here and say that this film also deals with consent and choice, and what happens to our minds when these basic human rights are removed from us.  There’s a lot of relatively graphic sex in it, and not all of it is 100% doubtlessly consensual, so please bear that in mind if you’re off to watch it.  There’s also non-consensual body modification and surgery, none of which is graphic, but the treatment of it is brutal and plays upon the mind’s ability to patch in worse realities than that to which it’s denied visual access.  And there’s also kidnapping, gagging, drugging, imprisonment and so on, all of which is beautifully and luxuriantly filmed for your horrified pleasure.  Nothing is sacred, no-one is innocent, and everything is broken.  It’s amazing.  It’s like, as the film goes on, it peels off layers of scabs to reveal more horrible things underneath.

Back to the sex reassignment thing, then.  This is the first time I have ever seen in a film the notion of sex reassignment as punishment.  I’ve seen castration as punishment (The Ladies Club), I’ve seen rape as punishment for being transgender (Boys Don’t Cry) but I’ve not seen this.  Now, my initial reaction was, “ASDLAKSJFLDKG HOW DARE MR. ALMODOVAR USE THE REALITY OF SEX REASSIGNMENT LIKE IT’S SOME KIND OF DREADFUL, FEARFUL THING THAT ANYONE WOULD HATE TO HAVE HAPPEN TO THEM” and then I realised that he’s actually written a pretty good precis of what it’s like to be a trans man.

Vicente, the rapist of Richard’s daughter, and let’s ignore the rape part for the moment, is taken away and forcibly reassigned “female”.  He’s given a vulva, new skin and breasts, and from the looks of it, a new bone structure and voice, too.  (And there’s also the bit where Antonio Banderas chains him up and shaves him with a straight razor, which gave me that’s-my-kink related problems…)

But he still identifies as Vicente – despite quite literally wearing Richard’s dead wife’s face (the reason, I presume, that the part of Vera is not played by a trans woman) – is tortured by how he now has all these different dressy, make-up-y and vaginal intercourse-y expectations of him, and finds solace in yoga and opium to help him forget the pain.

Dude, that’s me.  Except without the yoga and the opium and… a few other things, too, but the main theme is there.  This is the non-consensual assignment of a sex and attributed gender role that you just aren’t.  He plays along and acts the part, but only as long as he absolutely has to before he can escape.

So that was the first time I ever sympathised with a rapist in a film, the end.

Seriously. Watch his films and tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not.

Apparently, people walked out of the preview screening here in Cambridge, which surprises me.  There’s nothing graphic (other than sex) in this film, and really, then, you’re only left with the themes to run with, and I can’t really see how you could be disgusted to the point of walk-out over the themes in this film.  The cynical feminist in me wonders if the very idea of sex reassignment is really that disgusting to some people…

You should see this film because:
– It’s Almodóvar’s most comprehensible and accessible film that I’ve seen, and would make a nice introduction to how brilliant his work is
– It’s absolutely brutal, terrifying and bizarre, and those are all qualities that make good cinema
– It’s beautifully made, perfectly cast, and the soundtrack made me cry
– You won’t see another film like it, ever

You should not see this film because:
– HOLY NON-CON TRIGGERS, BATMAN
– Antonio Banderas is problematically hot and it’s difficult to watch him being such a terrifying pile of mess and insanity without fancying him a lot
– OR AT LEAST I THOUGHT SO, BUT THEN, I DO HAVE THE WORST TASTE IN MEN EVER

Exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of your host EVERY TIME HE HAS TO ILLUSTRATE ANYTHING

I am pleased to say that I was wrong. And Thor is, in fact, awesome. In all ways. Although especially in the way that Chris Hemsworth is jaw-droppingly attractive and takes his shirt off for extended periods. Also his biceps appear to be gearing up to eat Tokyo. And there’s mud wrestling.

The film uses a lot of beautiful scenery, which I'm sure you will appreciate.

Now, when I tell you the plot you’ll tell me that I have gone mad for liking it, and that I was blinded by the sight of such a perfect male specimen. In my defence, this is an actor cast to play Thor, so he needs to be at least a bit buff.

Bear with me.

The Aesir here are basically alien-space royalty and live on this beautiful world with crystal palaces and epic science/magic. The rainbow bridge (guarded by Heimdall, played by the brilliant-in-everything Idris Elba) allows them to blast their way to other planets. Using the argument that any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic, they are worshipped as gods by the primitive Vikings.

Thus when a chap falls to earth (landing in a small town somewhere in the sandy square states) and proclaims himself Thor, everyone thinks he’s a bit mad. Especially when the rampaging starts. However, some handy scientists need him for some handy science, and then there’s this hammer that no-one can lift…

This all had the potential to be cringingly awful and cheesy, but fortunately it was handled in a rarely-seen triumphal triumvirate of sensitive and nuanced acting, balanced direction (Kenneth Branagh at the helm, and he’s a man who can deal with a lot of ham) and a script that focused on that shyest of all beasts in the comic book action genre: character development.

Mark Millar's Moody Thunder God

That’s right. Character development. Get in.

Anthony Hopkins, who plays Odin, is seen here in an interview calling Thor “a superhero film with a bit of Shakespeare in”, which is a good summary. The almost unbelieveable plot is rescued from itself by the way in which it allows characters to grow.

I was very happy that the writers had chosen to riff heavily from Mark Millar‘s Ultimate Thor rewrites, in which Thor is styled as a hero struggling with self-doubt and the agony of everyone thinking that he’s actually suffering from delusions that make him think he’s a god.

In the film, Thor gets kicked out of Valhalla by Odin for being an annoying, spoilt teenager who picks fights and starts wars. He needs to make good and get some responsibility.

We follow Thor on his journey from arrogant, angry young man to being, well, a grown up. His essential good-naturedness and charm, as well as obvious desire to do good, make this neither pat nor schmaltzy, but wholly believable, and at times exceptionally moving.

In the meantime, his brother Loki is also trying to find himself. Rather than the standard trope of being evil because he’s a villain (although he is of course played by an English actor), the whole thing is carried off with depth, subtlety and aplomb by Tom Hiddleston.

Like Thor, Loki grows into himself, and it is only at the end that he makes the transition from a young warrior of potential into someone capable of evil. You know, the thing that George Lucas tried to do with the backstory for that guy in the black armour, but ended up just embarrassing everyone?

I bet Natalie Portman (playing handy scientist Jane Foster) was glad to get that storyline right this time.

Speaking of Natalie Portman, let’s have a look at the female characters. They are admittedly thin on the ground, but those that are there are pretty good. Portman and Kat Dennings (playing Darcy) give good scientist and political scientist respectively, with the Jane Foster character updated from nurse to physicist.  Both women avoid the dull stereotype of being either predictably “spirited” or annoyingly wet.

Sif kicks ass. Fact.

The kickass Jaime Alexander plays Sif (Thor’s wife in the mythology, but we’ll leave that for the sequel, I suppose), heads up Team Junior Aesir in their fight to rescue Thor from Earth, and gets as much, if not more, fighting screen time as the rest of them.

She’s also wearing a costume that looks appropriate to fighting in, which is a personal bugbear of mine. No-one can fight crime in a bustier. No-one. Pay attention, people allegedly, eventually, making Wonder Woman. I said no-one.

There’s also some ice giants in it, but realistically the action element plays second fiddle to the storyline, and although there were a lot of fighting sequences my overall impressions of the film were about people and personalities rather than a barrage of things crashing into other things.

Which is no bad thing. I love action films, but I love them even more if there’s more to them than just action (are you listening, Michael Bay?)

And the action wasn’t exactly light on the ground – there were some very pleasing fights on all realms of reality from soldiers to robots to lots of ice giants getting hit in the face. A personal favourite caused me to turn and hi-five the person next to me (fortunately, Miranda, and not a stranger) because Thor had just smashed his hammer into the face of an enormous ice-beast and SAVED THE DAY in epic hero style.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You like comic book adaptations or action films
• It has an amazing cast acting their socks off
• You want to see how EPIC Norse Gods can be whether they are good or evil
• You want to sing this song over and over in your head when you’ve left the cinema
• Just go and see it already!

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You are allergic to bling, muscles, fighting, deep voices or CGI ice giants.
• You realise that they didn’t put Fenris Wolf in, OR cast Brian Blessed as Odin, and that makes you a bit sad.