Jimmy Kimmel-like excerpts from David Rooney’s THR review of Robert Eggers’ The Northman (Focus, 4.22):

On the other hand, Variety‘s Peter Debruge says that The Northman suffers from an over-reliance on “craft over character”:

“The Northman feels unusually thin, with less meat on its bones than 2007’s schlocky Pathfinder or your basic Conan movie.

“Eggers, who has worked with A24, has reverted to a more conventional mode for this relatively mainstream Focus Features release, eschewing the elevated language of The LighthouseDavid Lowery’s The Green Knight last year — a film that should have paved the way for far greater expressionism here.

“The movie that The Northman most resembles is The Revenant, an impressively orchestrated marathon of misery that prioritized directorial skill over audience engagement. Eggers’ feat seems similarly monomaniacal in its mission, often at the expense of the human dimension.”