Alexander Skarsgard has quietly carved out a niche as one of the top sinister bad guys of his generation. Whether it be the homicidal Viking in The Northman, the psychopathic tech CEO in HBO’s transcending drama Succession, the abusive antagonist in HBO’s beloved Big Little Lies, the lead sexual assaulter/terrorizer in the underrated remake of Straw Dogs, or the charming and soft-spoken, yet sadistic and narcissistic sergeant in Dan Krauss’s The Kill Team, a fictionalized version of the killings of unarmed Afghan civilians carried out by US soldiers in the Maywand District in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan in 2010.
Category Archives: Alexander Skarsgard
Long Shot (2019)
Long Shot is a terrible title for a not-so-terrible movie. I won’t mention too much more about the title other than to say that it’s a difficult title to remember and to associate with a film about a Secretary of State (who isn’t really a long shot) and her political campaign and run for the presidency after the incumbent president decides that he won’t be seeking reelection. Nevertheless, Jonathan Levine’s political rom-com (50/50, The Night Before) packs in the laughs while cutting into today’s political landscape just enough to be edgy but not so over the top that it will divide audiences. Long Shot may not be remembered for its title. Still, it will be remembered for its intelligent, timely writing, witty banter, crunch-worthy predicaments, and solid performances from its two leads.
What Maisie Knew (2013)
What Maisie Knew was a movie that I accidentally watched twice. I couldn’t remember if I had seen it and was not entirely convinced until I was about 30 minutes in. But since I had already made it that far and I couldn’t remember anything that happened in the movie, I decided to stick it out. Now I remember why I had forgotten it all. It was worth forgetting. It’s not that it’s a bad movie. On the contrary, I would consider it to be a slightly above-average movie. The main problem with it is that it had much more potential than it lived up to, and the story that was trying to be told at the beginning of the movie was very different than the movie that was shown at the end. Continue reading What Maisie Knew (2013)
Disconnect (2013)
Melancholia (2011)
After being thoroughly disappointed by Terrence Malick’s tone poem The Tree of Life, I was hesitant to watch Melancholia after watching its similar artistic trailer and hearing comparisons between the two movies. However, unlike The Tree of Life, which I went to see thinking would be a good movie, I decided to view Melancholia because some were calling it the best performance of Kirsten Dunst’s (Spiderman, The Virgin Suicides) career. While Dunst was deserving of the praise, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience of Melancholia.