Review: Netflix’s ‘Against the Ice’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 Looking at the poster for today’s new Netflix release, you might first think of two possibilities. One is that it’s the latest Liam-Neeson-fights-wolves survival thriller, only Neeson wasn’t available. The other is that it’s a new project you haven’t heard about from Christopher Nolan where the characters defy gravity in their walks like in Inception and Tenet. It turns out it’s neither, but rather just a snow-set drama about a real-life explorer from Denmark.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best known as Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones, stars as Ejnar Mikkelsen, the captain of a 1909 Danish expedition whose express goal is to show his country’s claim to Northeast Greenland, which is being challenged by the United States...

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Game of Thrones "The Last of the Starks" (S08E04)

by Eric Blume

In this season’s best episode yet, Game of Thrones head creatives David Benioff and D.B. Weiss display their astounding aesthetic taste and uncanny ability to know exactly what viewers want to see.  This episode featured one powerhouse match-up after the next, giving us duet after duet of characters we want to see together, talking about what we want them to talk about, in exactly the way we want them talking about it.  The episode also features particularly fine writing, an element of Game of Thrones that often goes unsung despite being one of the show’s strongest features.

The show opened with a funeral segment and an extended banquet scene that paid tribute to last week’s monumental battle...

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Game of Thrones "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" (S08E02)

previously

by Eric Blume

The Game of Thrones creative team are taking a very strategic approach into this final season.  While last week’s premiere episode laid the groundwork to reorient the viewer and feature satisfying reunions for characters parted for years, they’ve used Episode Two to provide an emotional tapestry between the characters, with a meditation on mortality, before they go into the big battle episodes ahead.  For loyal viewers, this episode served as a reminder of our attachment to these characters beyond the narrative, as well as a laser focus on the show’s main theme of honor.

We started with a killer scene where Jaime stands trial against the two families he has slain and wronged over the years, followed immediately by a tender exchange between him and his brother Tyrion (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau and Peter Dinklage are always magical together)...

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Game of Thrones. The Final Season Approaches

Though The Film Experience has not covered Game of Thrones in the past beyond the occasional mention, a couple of our contributors are big fans and since the final season is the television event of the year, we're opting to break tradition and cover each episode. Here are Eric Blume and Ben Miller, who will be writing up the final episodes, to grill each other on their experience of the series to date if you'd like to join them in this refresher. - Editor.

ERIC:  Ben, I’m excited about working on this project with you. Let's start at the beinning: Have you been a fan of the show since the first episode, or did you join somewhere in progress?  What made you fall in love with it?

BEN: I got into it on the ground floor.  I was never much of a fantasy book reader (no Harry Potter, no Lord of the Rings), but this seemed like one of the first shows where people were genuinely excited for the potential of what it could be.  I knew a few people who had read the books, but I went in fairly cold and with an open mind.  You also have to keep in mind of what HBO was doing at the time...

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De Palma's Domino Falls Shortly

by Jason Adams

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of director Brian De Palma making feature-length films -- I've never seen 1968's Murder à la Mod, which was thought lost until it popped up as an extra on Criterion's Blow Out disc in 2011 (can we all just agree that Criterion is nuts, you guys), but I think it's safe to guess that there's something worth seeing in it because even at his worse (and he's had plenty of those moments) Brian De Palma always gives us something to stare at... 

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