Troll 2 (2025)

Troll, except now there's 2 of them. Not to be confused with this Troll 2.

If the first one was Godzilla, then this is Godzilla vs. Kong. That is to say, there's nothing truly original about this. It's a Norwegian film riddled with Hollywood clichés. As always, the slow motion telegraphs emotion and the contrivances are there to wring some forced drama out of the proceedings.

This movie is bad; not in a fun way. It made me long to see The BFG again.

1 silver sword dipped in holy water out of 5

Troll (2022)

Deep in the mountains of Dovre, an ancient troll has awakened from its slumber, while a paleontologist teams up with her estranged father to investigate it in this Norwegian folklore-inspired monster flick, which feels like the local Nordic version of Godzilla. It's mostly the CGI that brings the quality of the production down, but the whole thing just feels so painfully generic, and once you involve the military, these films become significantly less fun. Honestly, Trollhunter is looking much better by comparison.

2 Halls of the Mountain King out of 5

Tomb Raider (2018)

A reboot of the TR licence inspired by the events of the 2013 video game, that was itself a reboot of the franchise. It has a younger, less experienced Lara (Alicia Vikander) setting out on her first real adventure, in search of her missing father (Dominic West). It attempts to make her more relatable than the upper-class lass with the bottomless bank-balance that we had before, but the 'working girl' scenes that open the film are genuinely awful. Thereafter it's as bland and workmanlike as the reboot of the game was. In fact, it's measurably worse because the game at least had a level of interactivity to detract from the uninspired storytelling and prosaic personality of its leading lady.

1½ colourful stones out of 5

FRITT VILT (COLD PREY) [2006]

A Norwegian slasher flick that dares to take the tired formula and change nothing about it, yet still strives to make a quality film.

There's really no surprises here or anything amazingly original. However, the script neither insults the audience's intelligence or lets the characters do anything really dumb like most slasher movies seem to do all too often.

The setting is effectively creepy and isolated, which makes for some great tension. A welcome surprise is that the cast can actually act, never really letting their performances fall into standard slasher flick cardboard cutouts.

I'm not necessarily recommending it...I'm just telling it how it is.

3 funny birthmarks out of 5