Movie Review: Robin Hood (1991)

So you're probably already aware of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which is an entertaining but ultimately mediocre and hollow movie with a great soundtrack and a damn entertaining Alan Rickman performance.

But also released in 1991 was another Robin Hood movie. Directed by action veteran John Irvin and written by Sam Resnick and John McGrath. McGrath was a veteran TV writer but this is Resnick's only film credit on IMDB. The cast is full of veteran actors, but the biggest name a modern viewer will recognize is a young Uma Thurman in her Post-Baron Munchausen, Pre-Pulp Fiction early 90s period.

Robert Hode (Patrick Bergin) is the Saxon Earl of Huntington and friend Norman Baron Roger Dauguerre (Jeroen Krabbe). Things go sour when Sir Miles Folcanet (Jurgen Prochnow AKA the guy from Das Boot) arrives and arrogantly starts throwing his weight around. He's here to marry Dauguerre's niece Marian (Uma Thurman), but that's not why Robin rebels.

Much the Miller (Daniel Webb) is caught poaching and Robin stands up for him, preventing Sir Miles from blinding the peasant. During his trial, words get heated, pride gets insulted, and Robin punches his way out of the castle and becomes an outlaw with his kinsman Will Scarlett (Owen Teale). They hit upon the standard beats of the river fight with Little John (David Morrissey), the attempted thievery on Friar Tuck (Jeff Nuttall), Marian running off to join Robin disguised as a young man. All against the backdrop of Prince John's regency during King Richard's imprisonment.

So why is this “The Good 1991 Robin Hood movie?”

Tone.

It gets the spirit absolutely right. There's no way that an early 90s medieval movie would ever reach the joyful spirit of The Adventures of Robin Hood, but while the costumes and sets feature lots of browns and washed out lighting, the spirit of the movie is deeply earthy. Characters sing (not elaborate musical numbers, just little ditties as they go along). There's some swashbuckling. There's trick shooting. There are glimpses of historical awareness, though they muddle together All Souls' Day with the Lord of Misrule tradition that belongs to Christmastide or the Merry Men getting powerful Welsh longbows about a hundred or so years before they became truly dominant in English battle tactics.

These are legitimate mistakes, but there's an attempt at verisimilitude and not something so nakedly absurd as the Ewok Village or Celts or a Moor traveling the 12^th Century English countryside because he has a Wookiee life-debt like in Prince of Thieves.

Then there's the romance. Marian is great here as a strong-willed and very court-savvy young woman with a sharp tongue. She has no interest in Sir Miles, and is charmed by Robin's benevolence and hot-blooded heroics. Even when she goes tomboy, she's still a girl in disguise and not simply an action movie character with boobs. This Marian's actually kind of bad in a fight, but still manages to get some good shots in. Compare with Prince of Thieves Marian who starts off the movie showing off her sword skills but becomes useless in the climactic fight scene. 

Robin himself is great too. There's no “You killed my father/betrayed my King, I need revenge!” motivation. He's just a proud, hot-headed nobleman with a rigid sense of morality who commits to his actions. Not quite Erroll Flynn heroic, but definitely channeling him.

Jeff Nuttall's Friar Tuck is also interesting. Nuttall was a major figure in 60s counterculture and artistic movements with an anarchic streak. Here he plays Tuck as a thoroughly shady character: evicted from his monastery for murdering another friar, he now travels the countryside selling chicken bones as saints' relics. Its an interesting thought behind why a man of God would go around with a band of outlaws, but Tuck's postmodern shadiness contrasts hard with Robin's straightforward heroism.

Straightforward heroism is the order of the day here. Robin is good, Sir Miles is bad (but not “consorting with sorcery and trying to rape Maid Marian” bad), and the two spiral toward a deadly confrontation before a legitimately earned happy ending.

Besides Men in Tights, this forgotten little gem is the best Robin Hood movie made in the last thirty years or so. Highly recommended.


 

Pulp Regression: Regress Harder

Much has been said in Pulp Revolution circles about readers/authors hitting a wall with contemporary Fantasy & Sci-Fi and looking to older, forgotten masters for inspiration and entertainment. Going back to Heinlein & Asimov, and then going back even further to Howard & Burroughs.

Having spent the last sixteen years or so writing in a vacuum broken up with occasional screams into the wilderness, I ended up doing something similar, but different, when I hit my dissatisfaction point with the state of modern speculative fiction.

It was around 1999-2000 and Vector Prime hit the Star Wars Expanded Universe with grimdark the size of a moon. After a couple disappointing reads, I drifted away from the series that had consumed my existence in the 1990s and looked for high adventure and daring deeds elsewhere, only to find Science Fiction was obsessed with philosophical navel-gazing and Fantasy in the early 2000s was a mix of clunky Tolkien ripoffs and Harry Potter (I tried reading And the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone but found it boring and didn't get far). If I hadn't found Discworld, I would've abandoned reading speculative fiction altogether after I finished The Lord of the Rings and then The Silmarillion.

So I went back further. College provided me with a broad scope of reading material, but just about anything from the 20^th Century studied at the academic level is painfully boring or trying to beat you over the head with its message. You have to look at the popular authors that most professors deem beneath them to find the fun stuff.

Fortunately I landed in the Medieval/Renaissance/Classics camp, where you could pursue a degree and actually enjoy what you were reading. Grand epics, titanic struggles, supernatural events, the horrors and heroics of war, love, loss, tragedy, human triumph, philosophy and even comedy.

By virtue of there being fewer extant sources of literature from the pre-Gutenberg era, what was preserved was a wider spread of academic study than more modern time periods.

That's because what was preserved was what these people wanted to read over and over. They felt these stories had value worth preserving. Homer, Chaucer, Malory, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Kidd, More, Erasmus, Dante; any one of these provided a more satisfying and educating experience about human nature than anything I read in class from the “Moderns.” Plus, once you got past the archaic language, it was downright fun and scratched a massive pulpy itch that I didn't even know I had. You don't need to learn Old English to enjoy Beowulf when perfectly good translations exist.

Unconsciously, I had regressed to Tolkien, and then deciding to follow his example, I decided to look at what he drew inspiration from and regressed further to the age of Myth.

Where am I going with this?

If the ballads and epics of history inspired Tolkien, they also inspired the writers of the pulps. Robert E. Howard pulled “Cimmeria” out of Herodotus and turned it into something different for Conan. I think there's real value for the Pulp Revolution to look at what the Golden Age authors were themselves stealing from.  

Besides, Beowulf's great. Everyone should read it. 

REEEEEE Vult, a Response to The Economist's "Medieval Memes" Article

Yesterday I became aware of an article published by The Economist on January 2^nd titled “Medieval Memes: The far right's new fascination with the Middle Ages.” It is an irritating piece of clickbait, that I normally would ignore, but this time its in my wheelhouse. Here it is.

Here is the Archive link if you don't feel like giving the Economist clicks for it (or in case it is somehow edited or removed)

I recommend reading along, because otherwise my ramblings won't make any sense.

Some credentials. I have a Master's Degree in Humanities, which is a small department at my alma mater that focused on a more Classical fusion of philosophy, literature, history and so on pertaining to a historical area. It was very niche, and allowed the student and department to work together to develop a focused curriculum suitable to their field of study. Mine was the 14^th-15^th centuries and more specifically the Northern Crusades. So while I am not currently employed as a Medievalist (it is a very small field and good luck getting your foot in the door unless you want to take a Marxist or Feminist approach to the subject, then you can be swimming in grant money. Sadly not a joke), nor am I by any means an expert in the field, I still am a historian thanks to my academic training, and I will be viewing this article though that lens.

First, the byline. The initials “S.N.” which tell me nothing. I have no idea who or what the author of the piece is, nor their credentials, if they even have them. A quick search of the initials in connection to The Economist bring up several “The Economist Explains” articles. One about Dutch people working part time, another about some economists wanting to get rid of cash and so on. A dead end, then. Next to it is “Claremont, California,” which a quick search shows is a primarily residential town at the Eastern edge of Los Angeles County that is home to a collection of seven colleges, both undergrad and graduate. So its a college town, and a large one at that. So the author of the piece is more likely to be a professor, or staffer, or student than, say, a pipe fitter.

Below that is a photograph from Game of Thrones featuring horsemen in armor that is clearly more fantastical than real. (Seriously, Lamellar? In a Wars of the Roses ripoff?) I suppose that's to be expected, since GoT is visually synonymous with “standard fantasy” in the eyes of modern pop culture. Ten years ago, it would've been a picture from Lord of the Rings. Yet it has nothing to do with actual Medieval scholarship outside of the visual cue of armored men on horseback.

The text begins with a contradiction. The first sentence asserts that until recently “it was rare to find Americans who were passionate about both medieval history and contemporary politics.” First, this is an anecdotal assumption without evidence provided (which is most of the article). Second, it mentions “the odd Christian conservative,” “a Marxist grad student” and “an environmental activist” in a list of hypothetical examples of your average medievalist. Each of these hypothetical people is identified as someone deeply rooted in contemporary politics. It is a Christian conservative, a Marxist grad student, and an Environmental activist.

None of these is a prerequisite for studying the past. Moreover, one need not have a modern political agenda to be fascinated by land ownership patterns or vegetable dyes. The Society for Creative Anachronism in particular is deeply interested in rediscovering how authentic Medieval clothing was constructed for the purposes of recreating it.

Moreover still, the odd “Christian Conservative” is less odd than one would think. I went to a Jesuit university. One of my grad school mentors was a Jesuit, and another was a devout layman who headed up the Catholic Studies department. I shared several classes with a few seminarians. The encompassed a broad spectrum of political alignment. In my experience, you could not throw a copy of Summa Theologiæ without hitting a fellow Catholic. Which is not a surprise, considering that Europe during the time period in question was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church.

“Since the September 11^th attacks." The current year is 2017. 9/11 happened sixteen years ago. There are people who were born after the event who are now learning how to drive. “Fairly recently” is a stretch at this point. “The American far right has developed a fascination with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—in particular, with the idea of the West as a united civilisation that was fending off a challenge from the East.” The idea of a unified Western European civilization (interestingly, the spelling of “civilization” uses the British variant, a possible clue to our mystery author) is one that the Medieval Europeans themselves held. It was called Christendom, and referred generally to the lands where Christianity was the dominant religion as opposed to neighboring Islam or paganism. The notion of “whiteness” was much less important than being Christian to the Medieval mind. This is part of the reason why Europeans were so enamored with the legend of Prestor John's distant, but very Christian, kingdom providing assistance to greater Christendom in a time of need.

In function "Christendom" was more of a cultural identity than an established geopolitical unit, since Christian kings and nobles were constantly fighting each other over worldly disputes well before the Reformation fractured the religion in Western Europe. There's also the constant friction between the Papal States and the Holy Roman Empire over who should lead the general Christian community, the Popes or the Imperial heirs of Charlemagne, that frequently led to wars and excommunications of Emperors. The idea of “Christendom” is by no means new. It is also no surprise that when Islamic extremists refer to their own attacks as literal holy jihads, that there are people who would take to the idea that “Christendom” is under attack again. In many ways, it is, or are we ignoring the criticisms of the “decadent West” and the rhetoric of how America is “The Great Satan” which was used by the Ayatollah of Iran in the 1970s? The far-right of the West are not the only ones dredging this imagery up.

“The embrace of the medieval extends from the alt-right online forum culture that has exploded in the last few years to stodgier old-school racists.” Oh boy, here we go. Deus Vult memes from Reddit and Twitter are very, very, very rarely to be taken seriously, as are photoshops of Donald Trump in crusader armor shouting “Deus Vult!” as a reference to his saber rattling against ISIS. Internet “shitposting” as its called (if you'll pardon my French) is mostly to be taken ironically or deliberately contrarian to get a rise out of people. A quick look at Know Your Meme would provide plenty of stupid jokes that display this.

“Anti-Islam journals and websites name themselves after the Frankish king Charles Martel, who fought Muslim armies in the 8th century.” I have never heard of a website named after Charles Martel, but I know for a fact that he was the father of the man who would establish the Carolingian Dynasty (Pepin the Short) and while Charles himself would functionally rule as Mayor of the Palace and Duke and Prince of the Franks, he never, EVER became king and deliberately left the throne vacant during his time as regent.

This is not some nobody. This is the grandfather of Charlemagne and a major early Medieval figure in his own right. He is well documented, and a MEDIEVALIST, even one not focusing on the Carolingian period, could verify this information with even a quick glance at any online encyclopedia. This is an insultingly amateurish error in basic research.

Curiously, the article mentions that modern Jihadists use their own memes and images to promote the idea that they are in a cultural war against a reincarnated Byzantium. Sounds like an interesting counterpoint, but is not addressed again.

We continue. “For Americans who are indifferent to the Middle Ages, or think of it as an unpleasant plague-ridden prelude to the present, this might be of little consequence. But millions of others with mainstream or left-leaning beliefs are attracted to the medieval era—witness the popularity of Renaissance reenactments, or medieval-inspired fantasies like "Game of Thrones".” I will meet anecdote with anecdote: Most of the people I know who view the Medieval period as “a plague-ridden prelude to the present” are left-leaning or Progressive in some form or another.

Why is there an automatic assumption that it is only millions of left-leaning or “mainstream” people that are attracted to the time period? For a theologically minded conservative Christian, the works of Aquinas, Augustine, More, Erasmus, and Dante are THE bedrock of academic scholarship. And “mainstream” is as vague a category as can be imagined. Besides, aren't the masses of average people the ones who don't care about the Medieval period that much anyway? I'm getting deeply mixed signals here.

Then it mentions conservative firebrand Milo Yiannapoulis for some reason (probably clickbait algorithms). He's irrelevant to the article, but regardless of what one thinks of Milo, he's such a self-promoter who puts his name out as much and as far as possible that it should be easy to copy and paste his last name into an article so that it can be spelled properly. “Yiannopoulos.” There. I just did it myself. Also, “including a preference for a preference for “homogeneity over diversity.” is a sentence where a big red circle from a professor would go to mark the error. Proofreading is essential to presenting a academically professional argument.

The following paragraph quotes an essay by Sierra Lomuto (I had to look up her credentials because the article did not provide them: she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania with a background in women's studies and English) at “In the Middle” a left-wing academic blog that I have never heard of but has 2,895,500 page views. Here's the essay in full, if you are of a mind to read it since the author of the piece did not provide a link.

It is left-wing and intersectional, which is a topic of social justice controversy (and beyond the scope of this already too-long response), but the crux of its argument is that it is a moral imperative for Medievalists as a whole to resist white nationalism from pointing to the Middle Ages to justify their own viewpoints. Fair enough, I suppose, but could it not also be argued by a Medievalist who does not subscribe to intersectional feminism that they too must be resisted from pointing to the Middle Ages to justify their own viewpoints if they are counterfactual? The end goal of historical study should be historical accuracy, regardless of agenda.

“Art historians document the appearances of dark-skinned migrants in northern Europe to show that medieval populations, if not quite as mobile as today, were still pretty mobile.” The “art historians” mentioned is one person, the person who runs the People of Color in European Art History page (medievalpoc.tumblr.com), which received considerable attention from left-wing outlets in 2014 (including NPR), has apparently received harrassment (which is never acceptable) but has also been rightly criticized for presenting factually incorrect information (the criticism of which is entirely acceptable for someone purporting to be historically accurate). Here's an example. (yes, its somebody roleplaying a Dalek, because Tumblr is a bizarre place, but at least they show their work and sources). Interestingly, the “In The Middle” essay also links to the Medieval POC Tumblr page.

The paragraph ends with: “Progressives and reactionaries may both be drawn to the Middle Ages out of an affinity for “tradition,” says Shirin Khanmohamadi, a professor of literature at San Francisco State University who teaches a course called the Multicultural Middle Ages. But progressives would find it most interesting to explore "the premodern contribution to 'multiculturalism' and to other modes taken for granted as modern."” Khanmohamadi has published one book, “In Light of Another's Word European Ethnography in the Middle Ages” in 2013 through the University of Pennsylvania Press. The description of which seems to explore Medieval European travel accounts, like those of “John Mandeville”, Gerald of Wales, and William of Rubruck. Fair enough, that's an interesting subject. What is much more controversial is her name attached to a list of 465 members of the MLA Members for Justice in Palestine resolution. The Modern Language Association is a huge body of academics who study modern languages and literature and have created the MLA Style Manual, which dictates the proper format for academic writing (in the Liberal Arts, at least). I say controversial because the resolution would call on the MLA to boycott Israeli academic institutions until political criteria are met by the state of Israel. That's uncomfortable territory for both sides of the Israel-Palestine dispute.

Then there is a small dig at people who enjoy movies and video games because that's somehow a sign of intellectual inferiority somehow? The very existence of Crusader Kings II, which is a very, very deep Medieval Spreadsheet Simulator, points to the opposite, that these mediums, while at times very flawed (such as Braveheart's Battle of Stamford Bridge Without the Bridge or the blatant Soviet propaganda of the 1938 film Aleksandr Nevskiy), they can be a valuable tool in promoting the study of the time period. Yet while absorbing medieval information primarily through movies is implied to be wrong, Game of Thrones is somehow fine, despite being a show many people watch for “titties and dragons.” If it is because George R.R. Martin has the “correct” political opinions, then this is, to appropriate a phrase, deeply problematic.

On the surface, it is a poorly-written article by an anonymous author with multiple proofreading errors, one glaring factual error, nonexistent citations, and a decidedly one-sided political slant that requires research on the part of the reader to discover.

The article's true argument seems to be that the Medieval period is one of deep historical complexity and nuance (I agree) and that it is a moral imperative that the gatekeepers of that academic knowledge must resist political stances that they deem to be wrong by teaching the benighted populist masses the error of their ways. On this I vehemently disagree. An “Ivory Tower” approach to teaching about the Medieval and Renaissance periods that presupposes the moral authority of a particular modern political philosophy is a dangerous slippery slope that discourages debate, encourages intellectual stagnation, and ultimately drives people interested in the subject matter away if they do not have the "correct" identity politics. No matter how well-intentioned it may be, that kind of mindset is identical to justifying every action with cries of “Deus Vult!”

Closing the academic gates against the supposed intellectual barbarians is not the answer. Those hungry for knowledge will seek it elsewhere, and the increasingly available translations of primary source documents, living history groups like the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) or several Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) schools or the slowly growing number of very knowledgeable Youtubers will be happy to quench that thirst for knowledge.

“We journey to Hell, but God travels with us.”

Conceptually, 2010’s Black Death is something that should appeal to me. It’s set in the Medieval period and stars Sean Bean. And when it very quickly disappeared to video, I was curious why it didn’t do better than it did. I am no longer curious.

Plot
It’s 1348 and the narrator informs us that the Black Plague is EVERYWHERE. Some see it as a punishment from God, while others see the plague as the work of witchcraft and seek to hunt it down. Our protagonist is a monk who volunteers to accompany a heavily armed Bishop’s envoy to a village untouched by the plague and where the people are said to be led by a witch. They head out there and things go badly, with most of the characters dying, ironically not from the plague.

Characters
Osmund: Eddie Redmayne is our protagonist. He’s released from quarantine after not showing any symptoms of disease. He’s not a very good monk, since he’s got a girlfriend on the outside with whom he’s broken his vows of chastity, and he urges her to seek shelter away from the village and will meet her in the woods. This is precisely the reason why he volunteers to go with the warriors. Osmund is both something of an idealist and a giant weenie. Being a monk, he’s not a good adventurer, but he’s not good at being a monk either. He gets into some difficult moral quandaries.

Ulrich: Sean Bean is our badass and pretty much the only likable character. He’s a cynical realist with an unshakable faith. Along the way he interferes in a peasant witch trial by shanking the woman suspected of witchcraft to give her a quicker, more merciful death than the peasants would have. He gets real pissed at Osmund when the monk wanders off to look for his girlfriend and ends up drawing back a bunch of bandits/goons and in the ensuing fight one of Ulrich’s men is killed. Ulrich tears him a new one for going off on his own and for being a little bitch.

Ulrich’s crew: The fighters in his little band are all rough-and-tumble guys who aren’t nice people. That’s pretty much the extent of their characterization, as I don’t even remember any of their names. The one that stands out from the rest is Bearded Veteran (because that’s what he is) because he shows some personality.

The Abbot: Hey, its David Warner! David Warner is always a good thing, even if he’s only at the beginning and end of the movie.

Langiva: Carice van Houten is our villain (OR IS SHE?!) She’s pretty much in charge of the little village our protagonists travel to. She’s pretty obviously the witch they’re looking for (OR IS SHE?!) and is very keen on spilling Christian blood to keep that Christian disease out of her village. The thing is, she’s a colossal liar and a smug bitch and starts needling the weak link of the group, Osmund by bringing back to life his dead girlfriend (OR IS SHE?!)

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Christopher Smith, the movie is clearly working with a lower budget judging from the small cast and with most of the action taking place in fields and forests. What few fights exist are nicely done, as are the few special effects. However, the movie is plagued by the vile demon that is Shaky Cam. If there is any devil’s work truly at play, it is whoever decided to use Shaky Cam for a Medieval movie. God I hate that.

Writing
The screenplay by Dario Poloni is…problematic. On the one hand it sets an appropriately grim and dark mood for the proceedings. So grim and dark that it would almost work better in the Warhammer 40K universe. On the other hand, by the end of the movie, its clear that while the villagers may be pagan, the reason the plague hasn’t touched them is because it hasn’t actually touched them. As in, it was just isolated from it. That’s one thing, but compounding it is the fact that Langiva and her henchman Hobb come out as atheists turns the movie into yet another question of "Christianity vs. Atheism and isn’t religion so very brutal, superstitious, and unenlightened?"

Yes, I get it, it asks the viewer to challenge and examine dogma under the lens of what it does in extreme conditions, but you know what? Its been done to fucking death. Just about every major medieval movie of the last twenty years has asked or implied that question (Ridley Scott did it twice), while other time periods like Ancient Rome (again, Ridley Scott) get a pass. What is it about the Middle Ages that brings this out? Was it Gibbon’s history? Is it a general anticlerical sentiment? Is it the Crusades? Because if religious atrocity is the subject of scrutiny, I can assure the Middle Ages had no monopoly on that. Hell, the age of the Reformation and the 30 Years’ War is full of inhuman behavior (and witch hunting was far more popular then than in the Middle Ages), why aren’t there more movies about that? Or rather, why are all of those elements squashed into a single time period? As a medievalist I am genuinely curious about this as much as I’m disappointed by this pigeonholing.


Sound
Original music by Christian Henson, and the music is largely forgettable. It’s been a few weeks and I can’t remember any of it.

Conclusion
I was hopeful for Black Death. I liked the premise. Did I want to see a group of warriors hunting down an evil cult while a witch tried to ensorcel them with evil magic? HELL YES I DID. If the movie would have stuck with that premise instead of backpedaling on the witchcraft, I probably would have been able to forgive even the sin of Shaky Cam. But NO. The twist flings the movie into the pile of generic postmodern medieval stereotyping AND features Shaky Cam.

But Sean Bean and David Warner were good, so there’s that at least.

“Oh, that's all we need, a god gone mad from lack of sleep.”

Great. Just great. An adaptation of an epic work that tries to tell “the real story” behind the myth. In the 2000s you couldn’t spit without having it land on some supposedly “realistic” take on a famous epic or legend that decided to cover everybody in brown, make it extra grimdark and take away all the elements that made the source material a timeless classic. Well, here’s 2005’s Beowulf & Grendel and I am just enthused to examine this movie.

Plot
So we open up with some trolls being hunted in broad daylight somewhere in the land of the Danes. Wait. Daylight and Scandinavian Trolls don’t mix, or rather, they mix like water and concrete. Anyway, Troll dad gets killed by some Vikings, then Lead Viking leaves Troll kid alive. Cut to the Future where Hrothgar the king of the Danes opens up Heorot and it gets attacked in the night by Grendel, who just happens to be the Troll kid all grown up and pissed off about his daddy’s death. Meanwhile, Beowulf washes ashore after a swimming competition and later finds out that Hrothgar’s got monster problems and sets out to kill things because that what Beowulf does. Beowulf and his Geats get there and find Hrothgar is a drunken, despondent ruler helpless to do anything about the monster. Then we find an Irish/Celtic priest who’s newly arrived and trying to convert the populace and a witch on the outskirts of town that knows a lot more about what’s going on than--

Really? I mean, REALLY? What all this stuff means is that there is a distinct shortage of Killing Things in this movie, and Beowulf doesn’t like that situation one bit. I agree with him.

Characters
Beowulf: Gerard Butler does a pretty good job of being a convincing Geatish hero. He’s a warrior and well regarded by his people and the Danes, and he’s a fairly upstanding guy too. Unfortunately, he’s a man of action stuck in a movie full of inaction, and doesn’t feel like a grandstanding epic hero in the fine Anglo-Saxon tradition. Which is a shame since he totally pulled off the epic hero in 300. Still, I suppose he’s the badass of the film.

Hrothgar: Stellan Skarsgård glowers his way through the movie as a grim and dour Hrothgar. Skarsgård’s not a bad actor by any means, and his performance here seems to be quite subtle. He’s a man haunted by his past actions, but the regret that Skarsgård shows seems to be different from the regret the story wants to tell us. Or maybe that was just me.

Grendel: Ingvar E. Sigurdsson’s Grendel is not a very good one. This Grendel is a big guy in mediocre makeup and extra bits of hair glued on. This Grendel is also given, of all things, a backstory full of some wash about how Hrothgar killed his father when he was a wee little noble savage analog, and so apparently when Grendel grew up he decided to take revenge by invading the hall of Heorot and killing a bunch of Danes whenever its open and leaving Hrothgar alone, because that’s- Wait. No. No. No. In Germanic society, personal honor and feuds were seen as something between the two disputants to settle. Taking the fight to others who aren’t a part of it was considered dishonorable, evil and cowardly in a society based around Heroic concepts (now, of course this stuff happened, but it was frowned on and stuff like murdering someone could start up a long running feud based on reprisal murders until either both families were left dead or somebody finally paid the weregild to settle it peacefully), which is the whole point of Grendel being a scary monster that needs to be put down. Turning him into some kind of feral Noble Savage archetype just shoehorns the monster into a position he’s ill suited for, since Grendel’s repeated attacks on the hall are brutal and cruel in their nature. As it stands, this Grendel does a bad job of being sympathetic AND fearsome. About the only interesting thing this movie does with Grendel is that he’s got his father’s desiccated skull in a place of honor in his cave.

Father Brendan: Eddie Marsan gives an… unflattering portrayal of early Christian missionaries to Scandinavia. On the one hand, he’s traveled there from Ireland in a little wooden boat all by himself unarmed, which is pretty ballsy. On the other hand, he’s shown as a filthy zealot prone to epileptic-style fits where he drools and falls down after getting worked up in conversations. And yet he’s still successful in gaining converts among the Danes, including one or two of Beowulf’s Geats. Because I guess even as uncharismatic as the guy is, he can still get converts because the Past is full of Superstition and Fear or something condescending like that. Yeah, he’s not in the manuscript.

Selma: Sarah Polley plays the most irritating character in the movie. Also completely fabricated for the film, she’s a witch on the outskirts of town that freaks people out because she claims to be able to know when people will die, which isn’t that irritating of a premise. Then she becomes an important character because she seems to be under Grendel’s protection and knows more about the situation than Hrothgar’s told Beowulf, which is annoying, yes, but not nearly as annoying as her incredibly smug and self-righteous attitude about, well, everything. Oh yes, and she’s never wrong about anything ever because she’s just so special. She’s also Beowulf’s sorta love interest because, well, she’s the only attractive available woman in the village. And a redhead.

Visuals/Effects
Sturla Gunnarsson uses the extraordinarily bleak and beautiful landscape of Iceland to speak volumes about the harshness and danger of life in early Medieval Scandinavia. Secondly, the costuming and architecture is suitably period, and the armor looks very good and apropos. Other than that, things fall pretty flat. The makeup on Grendel is pretty average and his mother’s costume is rather better, but she’s barely in the movie anyway. The pacing is glacial and the brutal action (*cough* and quick pacing) that’s a hallmark of the Beowulf story is mostly absent. Magic is nonexistent despite having a witch, but we’ve got some monsters, so there’s a disparity in mythological elements, and the famous Beowulf/Grendel showdown is unrewarding, because while Grendel loses an arm, as per story requirements, its not from Beowulf tearing it out with his bare hands due to his sheer awesomeness.

Writing
Andrew Rai Berzins did some…interesting things adapting the ancient poem to the screen. First, all of that beautiful alliterative rhythm of the language and the subtle wordplay that describes things indirectly known as kennings is totally gone. Nobody's calling the ocean a whale-road in this Beowulf movie, thank you very much. Nope. Dialog here is dull, modernized and unimaginative. Grendel is described several times as “a fucking troll” by Hrothgar. I mean, really? That’s the best they can muster? I mean, I’ve got nothing against profanity by any means, but when you put something as uninspired as that into the mouths of warriors who’ve grown up in a heroic, boasting and non-literate culture, words should have greater meaning than that. Though there is one bit that is rather amusing: Grendel doesn’t attack the first night the Geats keep their vigil in the Hall. Grendel comes to the door and proceeds to piss on it, which, for infantile toilet humor, is pretty decent.

Then there’s the issue of all the story additions. The new characters aren’t good or welcome, but they’re covered above. Now, the movie tries to garner sympathy for Grendel, what with making his attack on the Danes a matter of revenging the death of his father in the prologue. So what’s the lesson of the movie?

Well, if you’re a Danish warrior who kills a troll and decide to show mercy by not killing his son, don’t do it. Finish the job. More lives will be saved by killing the little troll kid than by letting him grow up into an incoherent brute. Moreover, why is it so easy to kill Grendel’s pa in the beginning, but so damn hard for the Danes to do the same to Grendel?

Sound
Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson’s score is fine and appropriate to Scandinavian shenanigans.

Conclusion
Beowulf & Grendel is a well shot movie that fails because of the story and script, and the kicker is that Beowulf is not a complicated thing to get at least somewhat right. Grendel breaks shit, Beowulf shows up to break him and tears off Grendel’s arm with his bare hands because he’s just that awesome. Its not a difficult concept, but this movie pads the story with so much ancillary bullshit and boring bits that the basic appeal of the epic is completely lost.


Not nearly as exciting as the trailer

“Nothing is impossible. Anything is possible.”

Throwing another video game onto the flaming wreckage that is my credibility, the royal we here at Castle RMWC are a sucker for medieval related things, and Ubisoft’s 2007 release Assassin’s Creed drops you into the middle of the Third Crusade as one of the mysterious and feared Hashashin/Assassins, but then it also promises a crazy twist!!

Plot
So, uh, its not really a twist if it takes place before anything else. Turns out, the main character is just some guy in a white hoodie in a fairly generic near-future setting that gets kidnapped by a fairly generic sinister corporation. The reason for this is that he’s a descendant of an actual assassin from a time period that is very interesting for EvilCo. and they plug him into a machine called the Animus which can apparently let you access “genetic memories” and live through them for something like “genericsciencefictionbullshitpsychobabblerubbishmillenniumhandandshrimp.” Anyway, its at this point that you’re seriously considering returning the game because you wanted to stab medieval peasants in the throat when it turns out that this Animus device is going to be the excuse to plop you down into the Crusades as one of your ancestors AND THEN you get to stab people.* Though its with a purpose. EvilCo.’s looking for some kind of MacGuffin that your great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddad was involved in finding and losing.

Characters
Desmond Miles: Nolan North voices our “Hero,” a bartender in a white hoodie that looks suspiciously similar to the uniform of his ancestor. Subtle. Anyway, he spends his time in the stark white apartment/lab getting yelled at by one of EvilCo.’s scientists and encouraged by one of their other, cuter, techs. He spends the entire game half-heartedly denying any connection to the Assassins and playing video games reliving his ancestor’s life, so he’s a blank slate of a character.

Altaïr: Philip Shahbaz voices Desmond’s much more physically active ancestor, they do share the trait of not having a backstory worth notice. A high ranking member of the Assassins, he’s pretty proud of himself and lets that get in the way when a mission goes pear-shaped and some of his buddies get killed. Demoted and nearly killed by his boss for his failure, Altaïr doesn’t exactly come across as a contrite or apologetic guy. Actually, he’s kind of a dick. Anyway, in exchange for not killing him outright, his boss assigns him to kill nine high profile targets (Christians and Muslims) who are “needlessly extending the crusade.” And if that sounds like a flimsy reasoning to you, give yourself a cookie. Our boy Altaïr does become the badass of the game as you pick up new skills and weapons for him (like his signature hidden blade: a nasty little wrist mounted switchblade), and he’s got some impressive le parkour moves that help him get around town. And when you can get around town by climbing up the Dome of the Rock AND the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, walking on the ground seems so passé.

Warren Vidic: Phil Proctor voices the Scientist of Abstergent Asbestos Asberger’s Sbarro Abstergo (you know, I’ll stick with EvilCo.) Industries who passively, then aggressively shoves Desmond into the Animus to get that information. If he had a moustache, he’d be twirling it.

Lucy Stillman: Kristen Bell voices the EvilCo. tech who gets friendly with Desmond, ostensibly because you’ll catch more flies with honey, but, well, there’s a pretty obvious twist involving her.

Al-Mualim: The awesome-voiced Peter Renaday voices Altaïr’s black-robed boss, the highly intelligent and dangerous “Old Man in the Mountain.” Based in the mountain fortress of Masyaf, Al-Mualim talks quite a bit about peace and freedom, but the facility itself is run much like a cult, and he does send people out to murder other people through a vast network of bureaus, so, you know, he's totally trustworthy and wouldn't possibly be lying to you.

Robert de Sable: Jean-Phillipe Dandenaud voices Altaïr’s archenemy in the game, the Templar Grandmaster and the last of the nine guys he’s sent to extinguish. On the surface, Robert’s a bigger dick than Altaïr, but there’s more to what the Templars are trying to do than simple crusading.

There are also the 8 other targets and Richard the Lionheart makes an appearance, but its not worth going into them.

Visuals/Effects
Simon Peacock and Amanda Wyatt were the voice over directors and Jade Raymond was overall project producer. And there’s way too many people and departments to go any further into who did what. Visually, the game is impressive when you’re running around the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The world is beautiful and character animations are solid. Facial details are less interesting, which I guess is a strike against it, but if you’re spending all your time zooming in on your character’s face, then you’re doing it wrong. The game does get a bit repetitive in its structure.

Writing
Written by Corey May and M. Dooma Wendschuh the story is…not what I’d call good. The whole storyline about an assassin who screws up royally and becomes an expendable tool against high profile targets as punishment is a pretty decent, standard story, but then the sci-fi story feels badly developed and shoehorned into what was otherwise an interesting tale of dirty intrigue and politics. The other issue I had is that Altaïr is held up as a tortured but ultimately righteous good guy, but he’s really not that likable of a guy, or heroic. He’s really more of a self-righteous, arrogant ass who’s convinced he’s doing the right thing and bringing peace back to the Holy Land, when ultimately, he’s just another agent of discord. I mean, one of his targets only becomes a paranoid, would-be tyrant only after Altaïr has killed several of his other targets before him.

And I’m not going to go into all the historical…liberties taken. Not gonna do it. Just….........no. Its not worth it.

Sound
Jespery Kyd does a great job with a moody, sometimes electronic, sometimes more orchestral sound. It is quite awesome.

Conclusion
There are a lot of flaws with Assassin’s Creed. A lot of flaws. At its worst, the game’s plot feels like it belongs in a Sci-Fi Original Movie. At its best, it’s a fluid, largely open world city crawler that encourages you to freerun across anything you can, not because you get a lot of rewards for it, but because its awesome. The sequel apparently fixes a lot of the flaws of the first one while playing up the great stuff. Still, the core appeal of the first game, to run around committing shenanigans in lushly designed medieval cities, is a solid one.

*Note, we here at RMWC do not actually advocate stabbing peasants, or any other kind of people in the throat, even if it is in a lushly designed Medieval city, and even if you do so by means of a flying leap from a belltower. Just don’t.

“It's like being stuck in a bog; it's not easy to pull yourself you once you've fallen in.”

Samurai are always fun to watch, so I’m not really one to turn down an opportunity to do so when it presents itself. Zatôichi monogatari (or Zatôichi 1) was made in 1962 and was the first of almost thirty films featuring the blind swordsman. That right there’s a phenomenon, so what better way to take a look (incredibly lame pun) at where it all started.

Plot
A blind gambler and masseur who also happens to be an expert swordsman arrives at the estate of a rural crime lord/Yakuza. The boss wants Ichi around because a gang war is brewing with the crosstown rivals, who also have a sword master as their guest. Ichi impresses the hell out of his new “boss” and starts orbiting the dirty dealings going on around him. He goes fishing one day and meets the other ronin, and the two become buddies that respect each other quite a lot. However, the gang war becomes inevitable and things get really ugly in the village.

Characters
Zatôichi: Shintaro Katsu plays Blind Ichi. He’s a generally patient man, incredibly competent, and a fantastic swindler when it comes to gambling, and can bisect a lit candle so that both sides have wicks that are still on fire. Ichi’s a badass, plain and simple, and one that is capable of sincere vulnerability and morose reflection on his rather unpleasant life as sword for hire in the world of organized crime. He doesn’t like killing, but the life he finds himself in is one where his particular skills are extremely good at keeping him alive. He doesn’t even use a katana. He uses a straight edged sword cane.

Tatekichi: Michiro Minami plays the henchman more or less assigned to be Ichi’s servant during his stay. He starts off somewhat comical and unimportant, but then you find out that he’s trying to forcibly hook up his sister with a gangster buddy and he’s knocked up a girl in the village. He turns into a complete douche bag when said girl in the village ends up floating in the river soon after and you spend the rest of the movie waiting for his sweet, sweet comeuppance.

Tane: Masayo Banri plays Tate’s goodly sister, a nice gal who is trying not to get dragged back down into the gangster world. She and Ichi take a liking to each other.

Hirate: Shigeru Amachi plays the other swordsman, a formidable looking warrior with a few major issues. He’s from Edo, but apparently left under less than ideal circumstances, and he’s also got consumption (tuberculosis) which is slowly killing him. Considering his problems, its not a surprise that he drinks heavily. Circumstances put him and Zatoichi into positions as rivals, but honestly, they’re the most upstanding, honorable and likable characters in the entire movie.

Visuals/Effects
Director Kenji Misumi filmed it in black and white, which gives the movie a great moody feel (and considering the criminal subject matter, there’s a little bit of a film noir feel thrown in). The story itself builds at a slow boil, with characters introduced and a feeling of the inevitable conflict mounts and mounts until you get some big violence at the end and a climactic duel. Misumi does use a couple of moments where he will have the camera in close on the characters, something happens and it zooms out rapidly to reveal a much larger scene. It’s a great technique and the suddenness of the zoom is a good contrast to the more traditional camera pans and whatnot.

Writing
Kan Shimosawa wrote the original short story that Zatoichi appeared in and Minoru Inuzuka handled the screenplay. Characterizations are great and you really get a feel for how scummy the crooks are and develop real sympathy for the two swordsmen. The story’s also got huevos for not going for the typically expected ending. Sure, some of it is expected, but there are some legitimate tweaks in it that make it memorable.

Sound
The score by Akira Ifukube is used mostly sparingly, for when the movie has its explosive bursts, and its effective.

Conclusion
Zatôichi monogatari is a pretty cool samurai movie. Probably not for everybody because its actually pretty light on action, but the atmosphere, build up and payoff are all really well done. It was a very good movie.


Surprising hard to find a clip of this movie on Youtube.

“When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.”

Now, First Knight was a terrible, terrible movie. We’ve established this in no uncertain terms. But, you may ask, what then is the measure of a good Arthurian film? Holy Grail is a comedy, so it doesn’t really count if you want to get nitpicky. So what then does count? Ah, to understand the proper way to tell an Arthurian movie, we must look at 1981’s Excalibur by John Boorman. It is a film long held up as a definitive Arthurian movie and subsequent films have all tried to do something radically different from it, like telling “the true story” of King Arthur. Well, let’s see what’s so special about this long, magic-infused epic that subsequent moviemakers haven’t even bothered trying to imitate it.

Plot
Whoo-boy. This could get long. Let’s just say that the focus of the story is a man and a sword, their fates entwined. Merlin arranges for the sword Excalibur to be given to King Uther Pendragon for the purposes of uniting England, but Uther gets blinded by lust and alienates the lords by betraying the Duke of Cornwall and sleeping with his wife (with some help from Merlin). A son is born from the union and given to Merlin. Uther is killed soon after. The son grows up into Arthur, recovers the sword and becomes King of England, uniting the land under his idealistic rule. He marries the lovely Guenevere, befriends the mighty Lancelot, but even then, forces are at work at the Court of Camelot that seek to destroy what he’s built. You know, pretty much the standard Arthurian story that follows his birth all the way to his climactic death. It’s a long movie at 140 minutes, but it covers a lot of ground.

Characters
King Uther: Gabriel Byrne in his big-screen debut. Uther is an ambitious man, eager to unify England under one banner; his. With Merlin’s help he gets Excalibur, a sword that can help forge that kingdom. Unfortunately, after settling peace with the Duke of Cornwall, Uther falls violently in love with Cornwall’s wife, Igrayne, and the two lords go to war. Merlin pulls some magic and Uther is able to ride into Cornwall’s court disguised as him and bed Igrayne (in a rather awkward love scene because he’s still wearing his armor). Merlin’s price for helping Uther in this is the child born of this union. Uther’s not in the film all that much, but he leaves a strong impression. He’s basically like Arthur but without the self-restraint.

Merlin: Nicol Williamson is this film’s glorious badass. Merlin is younger than one would normally expect. His beard is neither gray nor very long. But Williamson brings an incredibly over-the-top delivery with a peculiar accent that just makes him fun as all hell to watch. His delivery takes a witty stance when he needs to and completely deadpan when delivering his grim portents and prophesies. He’s an absolute scene stealer and a character that really gets a lot done.

Arthur: Nigel Terry has a lot to do in this film, basically playing Arthur from a young man all the way to old age. He does an all right job, delivering everything with a straight face, and he looks appropriate in the armor as a leader of men, but there’s just something missing from the character that I can’t place. There’s a fire that’s missing from Arthur for a lot of scenes.

Lancelot: Nicholas Clay is Lancelot, a knight bold and true and undefeatable in combat. Until Arthur pushes Excalibur over the limit to beat him (breaking the sword in the process: don’t worry, it gets fixed). Lancelot is Arthur’s greatest knight, but of course he falls in love with Guenevere and that whole situation comes up. Its handled much better here than in *shudder* First Knight. They know their attraction is wrong and Lancelot does everything in his power to keep away from her, but it just doesn’t work and the two do eventually do the deed (yielding quite a bit more naked Lancelot than is bargained for).

Guenevere: Cheri Lunghi rounds out the love triangle. She’s all right as the Queen of Camelot, and the movie does give her and Arthur’s romance time to grow before the marriage, which works in their favor when it comes time for the affair. Still, Arthur, Lancelot and Guenevere all feel like weaker links in this film, especially compared to the Merlin subplot.

Leodegrance: Patrick Stewart (yes, that one) plays the smaller role of Guenevere’s father. A veteran warrior who sides with Arthur soon after the lad draws the sword from the stone, he’s a loyal member of the court and in Arthur’s riding to his aid, the king meets Guenevere. Sadly, Leodegrance disappears from the movie after the wedding.

Gawain: Liam Neeson in one of his earliest roles. He plays Gawain as a fairly simple big guy with an odd haircut (seriously, I don’t get why they did that). His major part is in challenging Guenevere’s fidelity to Arthur. After that, he fades into the background.

Perceval: Paul Geoffrey plays a plucky lad who wants to become a knight, eventually convincing Lancelot to take him to Camelot where he can become a squire. He gets knighted in order to help defend Guenevere’s honor. After that, he becomes the central figure of the grail quest, where he practically goes through hell to find the cup.

Uryens: Keith Buckley plays a lord that is most resistant to Arthur ascending the throne. After a battle, Uryens finally comes round and joins the court. He’s a minor character, but the fact that he keeps showing up consistently through the movie makes him worth mentioning, particularly for his part in the grail quest with Perceval.

Morgana: Helen Mirren (yes, that one) plays the scheming magician that’s Arthur’s half sister. She plays Morgana up as a vamp, sidling up to male characters like Arthur and Merlin to get them to do what she wants. She really hams it up, particularly in her mental duel with Merlin as she tries to seduce him in order to learn all his secrets.

Mordred: Robert Addie plays the unholy spawn of Morgana’s deceptive union with Arthur, the arrogant, ambitious, cruel Mordred. He makes a striking appearance with his gold armor and a helmet that basically serves as a mask (with golden hair and open for his mouth so that it looks like a corrupted face). The armor is ten times as creepy on the boy Mordred, played by Charley Boorman (the director’s son). Man those scenes with boy Mordred were creepy. That laugh alone can cause nightmares.

Visuals/Effects
John Boorman, who directed Deliverance, Exorcist: II and the, er... "legendary" Zardoz, went full out with the look of the film. Completely throwing historicity out the window in favor of myth, his knights spend all their time running, lounging, playing and fornicating in armor, if for no other reason than it looks mythical. Filmed in Ireland, the movie has a wet, lush and very green feel to it that helps with the atmosphere. The movie definitely goes for the magical route of Arthurian legend, but does so more subtly than with puppets or guys in rubber dragon costumes, and I think that’s really for the best. Here, the magical stuff is shadowy, mysterious and you can’t really be sure its all on the level with the heroes, not even with Merlin. Also, the color green (usually reflected or lit up in an unearthly way) is a nice way of saying “magical stuff here” without being too obvious about it. The visual pacing is nice, with scenes moving along, but the movie does feel long, just by the sheer amount of stuff it piles on. The fight scenes on the other hand, well, they’re pretty clunky and slow moving, though not without entertainment.

Writing
Thomas Malory gets credited for Le Morte D’Arthur, which tells you how historically accurate this film’s going to be. (The answer is not at all.) John Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg adapted the mammoth book into a big film, and generally do a good job of telling the Arthur story and hitting the major beats. The Merlin/Morgana interplay is mostly new though, and that’s also the part of the film that really stands out. I definitely have to give credit to a movie that manages to add some interesting new elements to the Arthurian Romance while still being a thematically faithful telling of the legend.

Sound
Trevor Jones wrote original music for the film, which works great, but the most memorable musical cues come from the use of some Richard Wagner and some Carl Orff. Orff’s O Fortuna from Carmina Burana being a signature sound for the film as it accompanies Arthur and his knights riding to battle. Good stuff.

Conclusion
Excalibur is actually a very fine film if you can get over the camp elements (like the constant wearing of armor for leisure and whatnot). The movie achieves an epic feel and really does succeed in bringing a mythological take on King Arthur. Its really more of a cult film now because some of the look hasn’t aged well, but for what it is, its probably the best straight faced telling of Arthur that uses all of the magical elements in the story. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn’t seem to want to try and surpass it on that front, instead going for “the true history of Arthur” movies that pile on the grime and filth and try to deconstruct the characters into the dust and owe more visually to Gladiator than to Excalibur. It’s a shame, but rumors are circulating that Bryan Singer is planning some kind of remake, which makes me cautiously hopeful for a mystical, thoroughly “Arthurian” telling of the tale.



And just to give you an idea of Merlin in this:

“It’s not over yet. I may get a captain’s head!”

In 1954, Japanese director Hiroshi Inagaki began a sweeping trilogy focusing on one of Japan’s greatest historical heroes; warrior, philosopher, artist, badass Miyamoto Musashi. The first of these movies, Miyamoto Musashi (or Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto on the American DVD release) tells the origin of the legendary swordsman. Starring Toshiro Mifune, the film series was based on a novel about the man, so liberties were naturally taken, but a figure like Musashi generated a lot of legends about him anyway. So sit down and buckle up, because you’re about to get Musashi’d (he was so badass his name deserves to be a future-perfect verb)

Plot
So a rebellious youth convinces his buddy (who’s betrothed) to run off to war to seek fortune and ADVENTURE! What they find is being on the losing side of the Battle of Sekigahara, where in 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu won a decisive victory that would pave the way for his hegemony over Japan, heralding the end of a long period of civil wars for supremacy. Anyway, injured, our main characters find a small house where a mother and daughter help heal them and then have them fight off some bandits. The women make a play for our hero, but he doesn’t want them, so he leaves. His buddy, finally healed up from his serious wounds, decides to stay with the two ladies as their protector, completely neglecting the fiancée he left back home. Our real hero returns to Miyamoto village where, thanks to his wild behavior, he gets every law official in the area wanting him brought in for punishment. He finally gets captured by a Buddhist priest who seems to have plans for the wild swordsman.

Characters
Takezo/Musashi Miyamoto: Toshiro. Mifune. All right, you probably need more than just that. Takezo is the “wild one” of his village, so much so that his relatives have all disowned him. He runs off to war to seek fortune and glory, survives battle and becomes a drifter. After his buddy decides to abandon his fiancée, Takezo returns to his home village, killing a few guards at a checkpoint. As the town officials try to bring him in, he keeps killing more guards in self defense and hides out in the woods like a bogeyman. Finally captured by a clever Buddhist priest, he gets strung up in a tree for two days to, basically think things over, but he eventually escapes and then gets captured again by the priest, who locks him into an attic full of books, telling him to train and bring himself under control before he earns the name Miyamoto Musashi. He’s quite the badass, but he’s also unbridled and wild, not thinking much through before acting.

Honiden Matahachi: Rentaro Mikuni plays Takezo’s buddy who’s an indecisive little prick. On the one hand he wants to marry his girl, but on the other he wants to follow Takezo to war. Matahachi eventually crosses the line into full douche bag when he tries (and eventually relents) to rape a woman and then abandons his fiancée to follow two shady women to Kyoto, eventually marrying one of them. His mom’s a real bitch too.

Otsu: Kaoru Yachigusa plays Matahachi’s long-suffering ex-fiancée. An orphan in the village and cared for by the town priest, she’s a good girl, honest and true. After Takezo’s return home, she finally learns what became of her jerkass betrothed and starts to grow closer to Takezo.

Priest Takuan Osho: The Buddhist priest in Miyamoto village who takes care of Otsu and later resolves to capture Takezo. A clever chap who’s apparently very well connected with government officials, he captures Takezo, brings him back to town and hangs him in a tree for two days, all while cheerfully countering Takezo’s shouts and promises of bloody vengeance. He just smiles back and says things that are obviously intended to be a lesson for Takezo, who doesn’t really get it. For being patient enough to not only catch the future Musashi, but also for giving the wild swordsman a chance to make something useful of his life, he manages to out-badass Takezo.

Visuals/Effects
Hiroshi Inagaki filmed the movie in color (the quality of which varies from shot to shot because of age) and the movie isn’t so much lush as it is moody. Rain shows up during Sekigahara, creating a hopeless atmosphere, then as Takezo travels around, the lighting and color help set the moods he’s in as he wrestles with himself. The use of shadows in particular is fantastic in this film, and Inagaki set up lots of fantastic shots. The movie is 93 minutes, but the pacing both makes it feel like a longer film that feels short for a long film (an…odd phrase, I realize, but that’s the feeling). The action scenes themselves, while not that prevalent, are brutal and quick, with a wild intensity to them and an “unchoreographed” feel to them, especially when villains find themselves getting “Musashi’d” (Yeah, I’m trying to force a meme here. Indulge me).

Writing
Eiji Yoshikawa wrote the novel, Hideji Hojo wrote the play and Hiroshi Inagaki and Tokuhei Wakao are credited as writers. Whatever. The result is a tightly crafted character piece that tells an interesting origin story for one of the greatest swordsmen in history.

Sound
The original score by Ikuma Dan is not a constant presence in the film, but there are moments of high emotion where it soars dramatically.

Conclusion
Miyamoto Musashi is a very compelling film that is much more of a character drama than straight up action, but it does both of those things well. A lot of loose ends are left over at the end, but the film is clearly meant to be the first chapter in a larger story, so its forgivable. Absolutely recommended as a dramatic foreign period film, and if that doesn’t sell you on it: Toshiro Mifune being nonstop awesome.

Not finding the trailer on Youtube, so here's the IMDB link for it

“…and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.”

And now, to pop the proverbial cherry of Arthurian films (Dragonheart was just foreplay) we come to the inimitable, indomitable, incorrigible Monty Python and the Holy Grail (or Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen) from 1975.

Plot
Well, there’s this king in England in 932 AD, and he’s riding around the countryside, seeking knights for his court. When he finds them, the heavens open up and God tells him to look for the Holy Grail. The knights split up, have some ADVENTURES!, reconvene, have more ADVENTURES! and hilarity ensues for 91 or so minutes.

The plot is deceptively simple.

Characters

King Arthur: Graham Chapman is our Hero, King Arthur. He plays the character pretty straightforwardly, actually. He seeks the Holy Grail for the glory of god & country. Something like the only sane man in a mad world, and it works well. The only real quirk they give him is his constant confusing of the numbers three and five.

Patsy: Terry Gilliam (the silent Python) plays Arthur’s squire, baggage handler and cocoanut clapping “horse.” Always by Arthur’s side, the character has one line. (Which isn’t to say that Gilliam doesn’t do more stuff in the film: he’s also the Old Man from Scene 24)

Sir Bedevere: Terry Jones is Arthur’s first recruit, the scientifically inclined thinker with an impractical helmet, Bedevere. He also has difficulty saying “aghhh”

Sir Lancelot: John Cleese plays the homicidally brave Lancelot, who on his solo adventure, storms a castle and slaughters some wedding guests.

Sir Galahad: Michael Palin is the chaste Galahad and becomes imperiled by a castle full of virgins. Isn’t sure about his favorite color.

Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot: Eric Idle as the coward Robin, who carries a huge shield with a chicken on it and is followed by minstrels.

The Killer Rabbit: The film’s badass is a fluffy white stuffed animal that is also a merciless killing machine that kills several knights.

Now, there are loads of other characters in the film, most played by the Pythons themselves, and they’re all comedic, insane and only around for a scene or two each. Its not practical to go into them, but Cleese’s Tim the Enchanter, a wizard with a thick Scottish brogue stands out as exceptionally hammy. Also, Connie Booth & Carol Cleveland (veterans of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers) make brief appearances.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Terries Jones & Gilliam, the film balances between a kind of gritty realism (armor is done fairly historically accurate with chain mail, tunics, etc. - Jones himself is a bit of a medievalist) and absurd visuals. The visuals themselves were done partially as a stylistic choice, but also heavily influenced by time and budget (they had precious little of either) and the cocoanuts instead of horses, Gilliam’s animations, and even the sudden ending of the movie are all iconic parts of the movie. Which isn’t to say that it looks bad. It’s a fine looking movie, but it also has that low budget, indie film feel.

Writing
All six Pythons wrote the script, as is their wont, and its very difficult going into how insane it all is. Told more or less episodically (they were a sketch comedy troupe) the form works here, since Arthurian legends themselves are generally episodic in nature. A lot of thought is given to even the most incidental characters, and the dialog is sharp enough to cut yourself with. There’s a reason why people can quote the movie from beginning to end.

Sound
The score was worked on by a number of people, and the “Holy Grail/Main Theme” is fantastically epic. The songs by the Pythons, well, the only full song is “Knights of the Round Table,” but the Pythons’ lyrics are as gloriously insane as their dialog.

Conclusion
Its rather difficult to write up this movie for people who’ve never seen it before. It is gloriously insane, brilliantly written, endlessly quotable and all that other stuff. The humor is very British, and some people are off-put by that. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is easily one of the best comedies out there, even if it has been quoted to death and turned into a musical.

“My name is Li Mu Bai. The Green Destiny is mine.”

I wasn’t joking when I said 2000 was a good year for Oscar bait that I’d go for. Ang Lee’s Wo hu cang long (hereafter referred to as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for simplicity’s sake) is a period drama that involves swords, revenge, death and love, and squared off against Gladiator at the Academy Awards.

Plot
Based on the fourth book of a five novel cycle, the movie is about a teenage girl on the cusp of her arranged marriage who would rather be independent and run away. To that end, she steals a famous sword from a famous swordsman and causes nocturnal mischief under the aegis of her mentor, a man-hating criminal. The warrior and his almost-but-not-quite lover set out to reclaim the sword. Quite a bit of DRAMA combined with ADVENTURE! follows for the next 120 minutes.

Characters
Jen Yu: Zhang Ziyi in her breakout role as the rebellious noblewoman. She’s at the center of the story, and brings quite a bit sympathy for a character that is ultimately a spoiled, rich bitch who doesn’t think things through leading to bloody consequences. But there’s a reason for her anger. She’s a character that is stifling in a rigid society that demands proper behavior at all times from people at all social stations. But it doesn’t excuse her actions in the least, and several people die because of her.

Master Li Mu Bai: Chow Yun Fat plays a veteran warrior of great repute who is trying to retire from his lifestyle and settle down to a life of quiet contemplation in a temple. As a gesture of this retirement, he makes a gift of his great sword, the Green Destiny to a local official/friend of his named Sir Te. The sword has a habit of being stolen that irks him, and the sudden appearance in the town of a woman named Jade Fox keeps him from hanging up his sword for good. Li Mu Bai has a quiet dignity and strength that’s just plain badass, especially when he starts fighting. There is, however, more to him that it seems. There are hints that the contemplative life of a monastery doesn’t have the answers or serenity that he seeks, and his longtime friend and partner, Yu Shu Lien, is revealed to be one of the most important things in his life. Speaking of which…

Yu Shu Lien: Michelle Yeoh plays Li Mu Bai’s friend and love interest. Her father established a “security firm” and she eventually inherited the business of professional ass-beating. Her friendship with Li Mu Bai goes way back, but due to societal constraints and personal hesitations, neither acted on their feelings for each other in the past. She becomes a close friend of Jen Yu’s during the film, bonding like sisters, and she tries to steer the young girl along a path that is more moderated than the one Jade Fox offers. A stoic, mature warrior woman, she conveys phenomenal volumes of depth and sympathy with subtle facial expressions and movements. For being both a smart and capable warrior, businesswoman and general fascinating character, she takes my nod as Badass of the Film (though Li Mu Bai is easily a hair’s breadth away from being it).

Lo “Dark Cloud”: A wild bandit leader who met Jen Yu when he raided her caravan and stole her comb. She took offense to that and gave chase, and the two had a whirlwind romance. That’s revealed in a flashback. Lo comes to the city to find her and take her away from the repressive courtly life, but in a lot of ways, only makes more trouble for everyone when he shows up. He’s a wildly audacious free spirit of a character, and his open, honest love for Jen Yu is a great contrast to the severe restraint of everybody else.

Jade Fox: Cheng Pei-Pei plays a bitter, angry woman who acts as Jen Yu’s maid/servant, but is also tutoring her in the ways of combat. She infiltrated a monastery once and murdered Li Mu Bai’s master after observing the school’s combat techniques and sleeping with him. She hates men in general, largely because they keep women down in society, but she’s also pretty psychopathic as far as mentors go.

There are a few other important characters, like Sir Te who I mentioned already and a police inspector/officer who’s in it quite a bit. He’s trying to track down the stolen sword and bring in Jade Fox as well, but he’s there mostly to get his ass kicked.

Visuals/Effects
Pretty. That’s the first impression. Ang Lee’s eye for Dramatic storytelling and setting the mood are great in this film. Colors are lush and the second act is defined by desert browns and the third by forest greens. Its very nicely done.

Of course, being a martial arts film in the Wuxia tradition, there’s plenty of fightin’ to see, and they’re easy on the eyes. The three that particularly stand out to me are the fight in the tea house where Jen Yu tears up a restaurant fighting a bunch of goons who only wanted a friendly sparring match, the incredible duel with Yu Shu Lien in the “dojo” and the iconic fight between Jen and Li Mu Bai in the trees. Extensive wire work was used to make all the leaping and soaring and standing on thin tree branches possible, which was amazing at the time, but it has aged a little bit. Not so much that it breaks suspension of disbelief, but if you’re jaded, the treetop fight really stretches it. Just roll with it.

Writing
Du Lu Wang wrote the book and I know nothing about the series it belongs to. Hiu-Ling Wang, James Schamus & Kuo Jung Tsai handled the script adaptation. And there are some interesting contrasts with Gladiator. First, its written in Mandarin Chinese, but second, the pacing is more drawn out as the characters backstories and connections are slowly revealed. It’s a more sophisticated method that adds layers of depth to the characters in a very good way. The plot itself delves very heavily into the Romance genre (classical Romance, not modern kissy-face romance) and despite being about only a few characters, feels very epic in scope.

Sound
Composer Tan Dun & Yo Yo Ma worked together on creating the sound for the movie, and its not what you’d expect of an ADVENTURE! score. Most of the themes are haunting cello work, and the action scenes go heavily into percussion. Overall, its very restrained, moody with elements of passion bubbling under the surface and totally appropriate to what’s on screen.

Conclusion
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an excellent, excellent film. Beautifully shot with compelling characters and story with haunting music, the movie does fire on all cylinders. It was also something of a gateway drug into the realm period martial arts films from Hong Kong.