Hello, happy new year, and welcome to the first Film Roundup of 2025! Both of this week’s entries were actually released yesterday on New Year’s Day, but it didn’t occur to me when I wrote the last roundup two weeks ago that this would mean they come out before the next one so here we are. On the plus side, it means I’ve had a chance to watch Nosferatu in advance of writing this up so it should be a little more insightful than usual (albeit also briefer as I watched it this evening and now have very little time to type this up!).
Usual disclaimer applies to the other film, which I haven’t seen yet: all of my opinions about We Live In Time are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Nosferatu
As mentioned above, I saw Nosferatu earlier this evening and I’m pleased to say it was incredible. The latest film from auteur director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman) adapts the seminal German expressionist film by FW Murnau, which itself was based on the novel Dracula. Bram Stoker’s estate famously sued Murnau as they hadn’t given him permission to adapt the novel, and this film wisely acknowledges in the credits that it is adapted from both the German film’s screenplay and Stoker’s book.
For anyone who doesn’t know the plot of Nosferatu (or Dracula), the film follows Nicholas Hoult’s solicitor Thomas Hutter, who is sent to Transylvania to oversee the paperwork for the terrifying Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård)’s purchase of a crumbling mansion in Germany. Meanwhile, Ellen Hutter (Lily Rose Depp), Thomas’s new wife, is visited in her dreams by the Count, who seems to be moving just to get nearer to her. As the full extent of Orlok’s evil power is revealed, the Hutters and their allies (including Willem Dafoe’s Professor Franz, Ralph Ineson’s Doctor Sievers, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Friedrich Harding) must do what they can to defeat him.
The original Nosferatu is incredibly influential in its visual style, and apart from a few little tributes Eggers has avoided trying to emulate it, instead imbuing the film with his own distinct look. This feels like a perfect marriage of subject and author, with Eggers’s fondness for black and white imagery and harsh lighting fitting perfectly into the gothic setting. There is a fantastic lingering sense of dread permeating every second of the film – as a horror, this very much relies on building an atmosphere over cheap jump scares or excessive violence.
Orlok himself is an incredible creation. Again, Eggers has opted not to copy Max Schrek’s iconic baldie, but Skarsgård’s version is just a sinister and much more imposing. His voice is so horrible it sounds like he’s constantly breathing down your neck – despite the laboured breathing, there is real sense of power. Like the best aristocratic vampires, this is a being that knows he is both literally and metaphorically above everyone else – you get the sense that even if he didn’t have supernatural abilities he’d be speaking with the same tone of authority and entitlement. He first appears as a civil and just-off-screen presence, but when the fangs do come out he’s truly quite monstrous, all rotting flesh and bestial hunger. I have heard some people have been put off by his moustache, but I thought that just added to the grossness of his character – watching the blood congeal on his whiskers was pretty stomach-churning. Skarsgård has always been good at playing unsettling beings (see also Pennywise in It) but this is a particular triumph on his part. Special mention too to anyone who was responsible for the visual effects on his face at the climax of the film.
If you have even a passing interest in horror films, I cannot recommend this enough.
- Nosferatu on IMDB
- Nosferatu on Rotten Tomatoes
We Live In Time
We Live In Time tells the story of chef Almut (Florence Pugh) and recent divorcee Tobias (Andrew Garfield) as they fall in love following a chance encounter. It jumps between three different time periods to chart their early relationship, the birth of their daughter, and Almut’s battle with cancer.
Pugh and Garfield are, for my money, two of the best and most likeable actors of our generation. They have three Oscar nominations between them and have lit up everything from superhero blockbusters to period dramas and biopics. Their star power is the big draw here, but it also looks like a beautiful romance story too and one that is sure to tug at the heartstrings in places. It’s getting some good reviews, with a very solid 83% on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing. I’m not sure I have more to say on it than that, but if you want a film that will give you feels instead of nightmares this week, this is the one for you.
- We Live In Time on IMDB
- We Live In Time on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Sink your teeth into Nosferatu.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Better Man – Far better than a Robbie Williams biopic has any right to be. You quickly forget that you’re watching a chimp – it’s actually quite an effective way of making the lead character stand out in a crowd, and the CGI is effectively done. Even if you don’t care about the real Robbie, I defy anyone to not feel some sympathy for the baby chimp singing Feel as he asks his absent father to ‘come and hold my hand’. Other standout scenes include a long, expertly choreographed single-take shot dancing to Rock DJ, a heartbreaking use of Angels (of course), a romantic duet of She’s The One with Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), and a surreal breakneck breakdown set to Come Undone.
- Mufasa – I still have some minor nerdy gripes about how this prequel fits with the Lion King mythology, but overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable film. The CGI is stunning, and Barry Jenkins’s fondness for extreme close-ups shows that off well (even if it does lead to a few action sequences that turn into the Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar…). The songs are good – again, I’m not sure that they all feel like they are from the same family as the Elton John classics, and there were a few that I might need to hear a few more times before I decide whether I liked them or not (the villain’s song, Bye Bye, comes to mind in particular) – but Lin Manuel Miranda’s fingerprints are all over them and I’ll never see that as a bad thing.
- Wicked
Trailer of the week
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man is the latest animated offering coming up soon on Disney+, and it looks like a lot of fun. The animation style feels modern but has also been styled to look like the early comic illustrations, and the remixed version of the classic theme playing over the trailer adds to the sense of old meeting new. The trailer doesn’t give much away about the villains Spidey will be facing (Norman Osborn appears to be on Team Parker, at least to begin with), but the general vibe of it is very promising. Any new animated take on Spider-Man will inevitably draw comparisons with the Spider-Verse films, which have set the bar insanely high – but if there’s one thing Spidey has always been good at, it’s scaling high things. We’ll see how close he gets when this is released to streaming at the end of this month…
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