Reviews

Part of the appeal of Arthurian legend over the centuries was the mystical and supernatural elements in them. This film takes all that out and offers nothing in return.

Historians have been trying to trace the historical origins of King Arthur for years. If he ever existed, he would have certainly been very different from the figure portrayed in myth. This film presents a possible candidate for the historical Arthur, but he gets obscured by historical inaccuracies and anachronism. The epilogue to the film mentions "new archaeological evidence" but we don't see any of that. This movie fails as a convincing historical drama, so what we are left with is a sword-fight movie.

This doesn't offer anything new as a sword flick. A ragtag bunch of brothers in arms, a conniving politician who screws them out of what is due, a quest to rescue someone that contains a moral crisis, one of the buddies gets killed, a climactic battle where more buddies get killed, and the main protagonist is left to ponder the significance of what just happened. We've all seen this many times before.

This film tries to make up for its shortcomings by going the Braveheart route with anachronistic references to "freedom" and human rights. These notions did not exist until the 18th century. If King Arthur ever existed, he was certainly not an early Rousseau.

Keira Knightley was alluring as always, this time adding the Charlie's Angels "Girl Power" element.

It's a mediocre movie that is not a complete waste of time, but it won't change anything about movies or how we look at the past.

This story had a lot going for it: a great cast, a fun story, the possibilities of modern CGI, and the landscape of western Europe. I was willing to overlook some of the absurd historical inaccuracies, like the possibility that Julius Caesar's bloodline survived into the late 5th century. Historical fiction can have some poetic license here and there, and getting too critical on the details would be like condemning Shakespeare for the liberties he takes with his plays.

This movie reminded me of some of the campy samurai movies and Sinbad adventures of the 70s, or even Conan the Barbarian. The fight scenes were just plain goofy. A look at the director's resume explains a lot. Aishwarya Rai was very pleasing on the eyes, but there was no chemistry between her and Colin Firth, or among any of the characters for that matter. With such promising material, I can only chalk up the mediocrity of this movie to bad directing. Doug Lefler should never be given something like this again.

Terry Gilliam's films generally deal with the fine line between sanity and madness, dreams and the waking world, and the rational and the imaginary. They challenge us to ask where this line is and who gets to define it. His protagonists are often children because they travel back and forth across this line with greater ease than adults, whose modern educations have trained them to fear it and marginalize those who live on the other side of it. Many of the images from these inner worlds he evokes are disturbing, but they illuminate how disturbing the modern world can be with its industrialized wars, crass materialism, cold rationalism, and fundamentalist authoritarianism (both scientific and religious).

This film is not for everyone, but no film should be. Whether or not you enjoy Terry Gilliam's films, you should be glad that there are people like him out there taking risks and pushing the envelope.

The negative reviews of this film on IMDb seem to fall into two categories: a) it was too violent b) the fantasy element was too muted

Without getting too political, worse things are going on in the world at this very moment than were depicted in this film. While many people prefer entertainment that insulates them from the harsh realities of this world, one shouldn't get so indignant when a film portrays the world for what it is. Capitán Vidal was a fictitious character, but there are plenty of people exactly like him. Humans are capable of terrible atrocities and looking the other way does nothing to improve our nature. If violence offends people so much they should do something about real violence rather than writing nasty reviews about depictions of it.

The violence set a tone of desperation for Ofelia. Fairy tales themselves are extremely violent, and Disney cartoons are nothing like the stories they were based on. This film was rated R. What were you expecting?

It is easier to understand people who thought the fantasy element was eclipsed, and were maybe hoping for another Narnia or one of the other countless fantasy flicks that has come out in the wake of LOTR. This film touched on many of the most fundamental themes of mythology, such as parallel worlds, dangerous tasks, hidden identities, sacrifice, and death. It did something more than the standard fantasy movie, which is part of why it was such a great film.

I saw this documentary after the 2006 midterms and after Ted Haggard's secret life was exposed, so this did not have all the potency it might have had when it was first released, although the irony added to my enjoyment of it. I will let others debate the proper place of religion in society and whether or not what happened to these children constitutes abuse, but these directors have done an excellent job letting their subject speak for itself. This is not a gonzo-style Michael Moore movie where they thrust themselves into the story, and there is no sense of selective editing to bend the conclusions one takes from it in a particular direction. The fact that many Christians responded positively to this documentary suggests that the directors did not let their biases guide them. I hope the rumors of a follow-up are true because I am curious to see how these kids turn out.

Finally, I can connect the dots between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. We see here where Lucas lost touch with what made the original Star Wars films great and began to descend into the plot less tripe that ruined episodes 1-3. This film is more like one of those cheesy low-budget 80s swords and sorcerer films than anything worthy of being associated with the Star Wars saga. As with the Jar-Jar character, this seems targeted at children (and the toy market). The battle scenes are particularly bad. It was depressing to see Sian Phillips' incredible talent go to such a waste, after her classic performance in I, Claudius.

I just finished watching the DVD. We have flocks of the same birds down here in Southern California that are always fun to watch in the palm trees (I think that Mark Bittner was right in saying that these are monkeys more than they are birds). I never knew much about them; I just assumed they were migratory flocks from Mexico. The way this film took a simple story--an eccentric with a thing for wild parrots--and wove it into a larger lesson about existing in a universe that is bigger than any of us as individuals, was masterful. This is not a documentary about wildlife as much as it is a parable about our connection with everything that surrounds us. I am normally a cynic, but I found this film to be very moving. If only more people were able to slow down and feed the birds.

Saw it on A&E last night and the only thing that drew me in was the curiosity of how much worse it might get. All the shots of innocent children playing were gratuitous and emotionally manipulative. The opening scenes of the baggage inspectors being so thorough was a bit contrived (apparently they were doing a better job back then than they do now). I got the sense that one of the goals of this film was to exculpate the federal government for its complacency, which after all is almost as much to blame for 9/11 as the hijackers. The hijackers were one-dimensional characters, almost like video game characters. There is no effort to show what their motives might have been, or to show that actual people did these things. I might be accused of sympathizing with the terrorists, but the fact is that they had a rationale (twisted as it was) for doing what they did, and if we are to end terrorism, we need to know and understand why it happens. I also couldn't identify with any of the passengers. Perhaps if the film makers spent less effort portraying the idyllic lives they lost (beautiful homes, beautiful children--did they really all live in tree-lined mansions in the countryside with angelic children) and spent more time on character development, it would have brought the pathos home. The Lord's Prayer sequence was particularly crass. If this wasn't based on a real event, it would simply have been an utterly forgettable B disaster movie not worth commenting on. As it is, this movie is a poor tribute to those who died that day, and a ghoulish attempt to satisfy our curiosity for what it might have been like to be on the plane that day rather than help us understand what happened and why.

I thought that this movie might be a good spoof, or at least a good independent comedy like Friday. Instead it was more like something someone in high school would make with their parents' camcorder. It wasn't just the low budget that makes this film bad (many great films have been made on a low budget), it is simply a bad movie and it wasn't even bad enough to be good camp. Case in point: for the first ten minutes of the movie nothing happens except the 3 main characters sit in their room smoking dope, put on their makeup, and then answer a phone call. You keep waiting for something to get story moving, but it never comes. The sound was so bad I had to turn the TV up all the way just to almost make out what they were saying (which wasn't interesting anyways). If I pay to rent a movie I will usually suffer through it even when it's bad, but it was all I could do to sit through 20 minutes. It looks like the person before me felt the same way because they didn't rewind the tape and left off about the same place I did. The only reason I gave this a score of 1 is because the rating system doesn't have negative numbers.