So it turns out that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) have a sister! Only, Hela (Cate Blanchett) is none too happy about being left out of the family business, and sets about to end Asgard. And a lot more happens.
There are so many best things about this film, and most of it is down to Taika Waititi. These films are funny, but this is Taika Watititi funny, and that’s brilliant. I love it. Just… yes.
Tom Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, the night manager in a hotel in Cairo who starts a relationship with a woman with some connections to a deep underworld and turns up dead. Some time later, living the life of a loner high in the alps (but still a night manager) he meets Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), one of those dodgy connections. He ends up contacting British Secret Service (though possibly called something different) and working for Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) to try to bring Roper down.
This is one complex story. There are six episodes, it goes around the world, there are heaps of different characters and sometimes it is hard to tell who is good and who is bad. I found that I got distracted at times and found I had to go back and figure out what I missed. None of that is criticism – or, rather, it is criticism of me and my watching habits as opposed to being criticism of the show. It’s brilliant and clever – my only criticism is that I felt no chemistry between Tom Hiddleston and the woman at the start, and given that it is that passion that is supposed to drive the whole plot, I feel like I missed something.
The Night Manager won Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (Tom Hiddleston), Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (Hugh Laurie) and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (Olivia Colman) and was nominated for Best Television Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.
Set in a strange kind of 1970s-Clockwork-Orange-style world is an apartment building. It rises in the middle of a large car park seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Laing (Tom Hiddleston) has just moved in, and is unsure of where he fits between the lower floor dwellers who are in overcrowded apartments struggling to get even basic rubbish collection, and the elite up the top. And then things get… weird.
I can’t really say what happens in this film. There are so many strange things, and it is so bizarrely stylised and beautiful, and some keys parts seem to have been skipped. And yet I really liked this film. I liked its weirdness and that I wasn’t quite sure where it was going and what was happening, and even where it ended. Strange, odd and fabulous.
ireckonthat 