Category: REVIEWS

I really find myself in a paradox with King Arthur. I love the story, or stories as it were. It’s full of heroism and noble righteousness, as all good medieval fantasies should be. But it also has some warped and twisted, and even sick at times, elements to it; again as all good medieval fantasies should. So, yes I do really like the Arthurian legends. But, I have not liked a single film based on the legend. Not one. I know John Boorman’s Excalibur is seen as a fantasy classic, and is a pretty loved film all in all, but I was never impressed by it. Mostly in a “not my cuppa tea” way. So, it pleases me to say that Snatch director Guy Ritchie has finally…continued that tradition of underwhelming Arthur films.

The legend of King Arthur is a rich banquet of great stories and grand ideas. So, of course it only makes sense that this film takes these qualities and throws them out of the nearest window. Yep, we have completely abandoned all the intrigue and classic legend for a much more straight forward evil uncle fable. Although this one does have elephants big enough to make Godzilla feel inadequate. So there’s that I suppose. Basically, King Uther is betrayed and killed by his evil brother Jude Law, and Arthur escapes to Londinium to be raised in a brothel. A few years later, the cockney accent develops and Arthur figures that it’s time to get “the lads” together, find his father’s magical sword and put an end to his uncle’s tyranny. And thus, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is born.

My God, what to say about this one? I didn’t expect this to be a good film. No one who saw that trailer could ever think this would be a good film. But I had no idea how bad this was going to be. I am a bit of a cinema masochist; I love watching bad films. Partly because I enjoy them, and partly because they make me appreciate good films even more. But sometimes bad films really do surprise me, like this one did. The thing is though, this was bad in ways I didn’t expect.

King Arthur doesn’t feel like a film. It feels like a two-hour long montage. Remember those training montages from the Rocky films? Well that’s what this whole film basically is. The cinematography and editing are so obnoxiously quick and chaotic that it gave me an actual headache! The beginning was fine, if a little CGI heavy. The ending was way too CGI heavy but still okay. There was just this whole chunk in the middle that was so chaotic and nonsensical that I gave up even attempting to follow what was going on.

The focus is definitely on the characters on this one. But, with the exception of the villain none of them stood out at all. And the film making actually had me either forgetting who a character was altogether, or more often than not, had me mixing them up. I remember that the film attempted to make them memorable by giving them the stupidest names; but it failed because I can’t remember their names at all. Outside of their stupidity at least. And the actors, again with the exception of the villain, are all very talented but completely wasted on this film. Charlie Hunnam as Arthur might sound like a decent choice, but I don’t think I’ve come across a more bland hero all year. He’s not bad, but he’s not good either…he’s inoffensively okay. The rest of the cast is just full of those “ooh, what’s that person been in” actors. There’s Maximus’ friend from Gladiator and Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, and ironically the woman who played Morgana in TV’s Merlin at one point. Oh, and David Beckham, lest we forget. To be fair, the only one who was bad was the lead woman. But wow she was bad! I mean Sharknado couldn’t-care-less bad!

I know, this is a Guy Ritchie film. The man has made himself a staple with his style of film making. But it really feels out of place here, and it’s just too much. It wasn’t bad in those Sherlock Holmes films, but here Ritchie could very well leave you feeling physically sick. Between the camera work, the editing and the ear-assaulting soundtrack he’s made an almost completely insufferable film. This has got to be the worst, most out of place soundtrack I have heard since The Amazing Spiderman 2. And then we have gargantuan elephants and snakes and so much more in-between all of that. I really cannot work out what anyone was thinking with this film. How did anyone look at this and think it was a finished film?

But, believe it or not, King Arthur isn’t all bad. The special effect, despite one or two noticeably bad examples, we actually surprisingly good. When the camera stays still for long enough, you can see that it is a nice looking film. The make-up is pretty spectacular too. Numerous times we see someone with a broken lip or swollen eye after a fight, and it’s completely convincing. There’s this really cool octopus monster that reminded me a little bit of Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and that was really great to see. But my biggest praise goes to Jude Law as the villain. I thought that I was going to get the big, shouting, hamming it up performance with this one. But no, Law actually plays the character extremely well. And to top that he’s well written. He’s a good and interesting character. He’s smart. And the chaotic film making calms down whenever he’s on screen. This guy could fit into Game of Thrones perfectly, and it is such a shame that such a great villain (possibly one of the best of the year) is wasted in such an awful film.

Basically, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword would make a great video-game, like God of War or something. But as a film it’s just a complete failure. It has some applaud worthy elements to it, most certainly, but they can’t save it. It is fascinatingly bad. You can find yourself pretty entertained in trying to find out what happened to make this end product. But it’s still not worth it for that. I’m glad I saw the villain. But everything else is just nausea-inducing.

Salta (Salta Bekturova) and Iva (Iva Litova), two Albanian young women cycle from Albania to England hoping to make people aware that Jesus is coming back.  After a long bike ride through hills and tunnels helped by expletive-filled prayers and determination, they find a target. Green-haired Azzees (Azzees Minot) assures the two girls that they are not seeing Jesus’ face on last week’s burnt toast, the soles of well-worn ballet flats, stains on the floor and a dirty bath rim. Despite this, she agrees to let them go ahead with the exorcism of her favourite promiscuous turtle, not realising that the devil is actually closer to home. Meanwhile religion-seeker Sarah’s (Sarah Gulbransen) Looking Good for Jesus kit has apparently added to her healthy glow, but she might think about taking a mower to the back garden.

This film is like one of those games where you pull out random words to create a story. A jumble of curious ideas –  Hackney, Jesus, Albania, green wig, turtle. Try it yourself and see what you come up with…

With an interest in multi-cultural teen subcultures/tribes and a mix of fiction and documentary, writer-director-composer Alex Z Taylor’s debut feature film ‘Spaceship’, the story of a teenager who fakes her own alien abduction, is currently screening around the country. Named a UK Star of Tomorrow by Screen International in 2013, Taylor “wants to make films which give people the courage to love themselves in all their weirdness”. Winning a Special Jury Prize at SXSW 2010 and five other international awards with his first short film Kids Might Fly, all of Alex Taylor’s work has premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and been nominated and won various awards. He also performs as Nawixela: an improvised duo playing guitar, saxophone, a toy record player, and cheap Casios.

By Patrick King.

Der müde Tod or Destiny as it’s commonly called in English, is a silent film written by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, and directed by Lang. Released in 1921, a year before Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, it is a pretty neat example of folk storytelling at the margins of German Expressionism.

Like everything Lang, it’s a beautifully shot movie. I mean, there’s always been a certain magic about silent films in general because of the primacy of the image and because every other element is subverted by vision. It’s where the modern screenwriter’s tale of woe begins. Silent films could exist, and even flourish, without scripts, or with just a small thread of plot tying them together. And that’s certainly what we have here. The cinematography, the makeup, the set design, the expression in the actors’ eyes, all of these things are far more important than the bare-bones plot that holds them together.

Der müde Tod is basically a collection of short films with a frame story. The frame concerns a young woman who’s trying to bargain for her young lover’s life after Death has taken him to the underworld. Death (Bernhard Goetzke), comes to a small German village. He builds an enormous wall through which no mortal can pass. Plenty of dead souls pass through it, though. Lang seems to absolutely delight in shooting Death in wide shots as he stands against the wall he’s built, dwarfed by the thing. Interesting, then, that Lang sees death as something so small. When the woman (Lil Dagover) attempts to bargain for her lover, we realize that she has more power because, although she cannot defy Death, she can at least make the attempt, which means she possesses free will, and therefore more freedom, than this sad creature who is chained to his fate. And, as it turns out, Death is surprisingly human in this tale. He’s not happy with his lot, but it’s all he has. It’s who he is. And so he moves through eternity having accepted his lot. This is a Death that we feel for, sympathize with.

The three stories between the frame are all about doomed lovers throughout time. One story takes place somewhere in the Muslim world in the middle ages, another in medieval Italy, and the final in Middle Kingdom China. The places and people are mostly mythological. They’re caricatures, sometimes evenly overtly racist. Yes, of course, these things have to be viewed in context, but it can all be a little uncomfortable for a modern audience. Still, there’s a lot of heart and romanticism here. The three stories share the common thread of love cut short just as it’s starting to bloom.

Of course we all know that death can’t be cheated, but von Harbou and Lang find a neat workaround, giving us a happy ending that doesn’t feel like anyone’s been tricked. Still, Der müde Tod probably barely rises above the level of a curiosity unless you’re very into silent film, Fritz Lang, or both.

By Marti Dols Roca.

David Lynch: The Art Life is the Lynch narrated account of the life of the filmmaker before he became that, a filmmaker. From his bucolic upbringing in small town America (Montana, Idaho, Virginia and Idaho again) to his first steps as an artist in “New York for poor people” Philadelphia, until the scholarship from AFI that led him to make Eraserhead; after that everything changed for the young painter in the funny hat.

The whole movie is told by David Lynch sitting in a chair in front of a mike and smoking cigarettes one after the other. While he speaks, we see domestic footage of the Lynch family combined with the slow and hypnotizing process of one of the filmmaker’s artistic creations. The movie is 90 minutes long and right when you think you will start to get bored, it finishes; leaving you with quite a satisfactory feeling: it almost went wrong but it didn’t.

There is also a very rewarding feeling that comes from the question raised early on in the movie: if he wanted to be a painter so much (film isn’t mentioned at any point until quite late) how come did he ended up being the Twin Peaks, Mulholand Drive, Lost Highway and so on David Lynch we know? Well, the disturbing, creepy part shows up pretty soon: as a “sweet” anecdote, when Lynch’s father went to visit his son in Philly, and David proudly showed him his studio full of dead birds, random garbage and strange constructions, Mr. L told him: I think you should never have kids. Turns out his wife Peggy just found out she was pregnant.

Leaving the accuracy of Lynch’s father statement aside (we see a fair amount of quite tender scenes where David and his toddler daughter paint together), shortly after this, Lynch applied for an AFI grant due to his recent interest for moving images. When the scholarship was conceded, Lynch put all his money, time and effort in the creation of his first movie. And while he was discovering that the seventh art is a combination of painting, music, sculpture, architecture, poetry and performing he just found himself enjoying more than ever with his work.

Eraserhead came along and the rest is history.

Now, the truth is that the experience of watching David Lynch: The Art Life is surprisingly satisfactory. The surprisingly adverb comes after Lynch’s well-known eccentricity. Even to his most devoted fans, the genius filmmaker work is always a riddle, so it is fair to sit in the cinema chair wondering what’s this “David Lynch: The Art Life” going to be like.

Well, the truth is that is as interesting (as it explains how did one of the most prolific and creative artists get to the Olympus of filmmaking) as hypnotizing (his voice and his paintings carry us along the 90 minutes in a very smooth, pleasant and light manner).