Tag: Freddie Fox

Cinema Dispatch: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

KALOTSCD0

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Guy Ritchie

I don’t know about you, but the definitive King Arthur movie was already made by Monty Python in 1975, so unless Charlie Hunnam is gonna be fetching shrubberies for the Knights who say Ni I’m gonna have a hard time taking this movie seriously!  Okay, so clearly we’re not gonna get a movie as good as Holy Grail (which admittedly is an impossibly high bar to set), but I did like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. well enough which was Ritchie’s last film, and while I never got around to seeing the Sherlock Holmes movies I hear they’re solid as big budgeted adaptations that favors style over substance, even if they did get overshadowed by the BBC show once that became a hit.  The point is, we haven’t had a good King Arthur movie in quite a while and Ritchie is usually reliably competent with this kind of bigger than life myth making material, so maybe he’ll have a chance of clearing that very low bar set by the likes of Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur movie and A Kid in King Arthur’s Court.  Can this movie manage to at least be better than those?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins long before Arthur becomes king; namely when his dad Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) was ruling shit and killing dark wizards!  It’s just too bad that the guy had to have a brother because as we all know, the only purpose they serve in medieval stories is to kill the current king and assume the throne!  That’s just what Vortigern (Jude Law) does here, but little Arthur just barely manages to escape after being drifted down a river on a small boat (I think we’re mixing our mythologies here).  He’s found in a nearby village, grows up in a brothel, and turns into Sexy Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) who for some reason has no idea that he’s ACTUALLY the rightful king of… wherever the heck they are.  They keep referring to it is as Londinum, so I guess it’ll become Camelot in the sequel.  ANYWAY!  You can’t keep a hero from fulfilling his destiny, and he manages to pull the sword from the stone (similar to how Link pulls the Master Sword out of the Temple of Time) which gets everyone under Vortigern’s thumb hunting his chiseled ass down so they can finally kill the Born King once and for all!  Along the way, Arthur teams up with a mage (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) who is NOT Merlin but close enough, Sir Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou) who replaces Terry Jones’s mustache with a goatee, and several others; some of whom are from the original stories and other who are clearly not.  Can this rag tag group of Merry Men… I mean Honorable Knights, take down the deceitful king once and for all?  Will Arthur face his responsibilities and destiny with grace and composure, or will he first have to run away from them like any good Joseph Campbell hero?  Did anyone proof read this script before shooting it, or was everyone on board with the giant elephants, anachronistic dialogue, and the random excursion to Monster Island?

KALOTSCD1
“With this sword, I shall become The Avatar and control all four elements!!”

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” →

Cinema Dispatch: Victor Frankenstein

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

VFCD0

Victor Frankenstein and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Fox

Directed by Paul McGuigan

Does anyone even remember when the last good Frankenstein movie was?  Can Reanimator REALLY be the last one of these movies to get the formula right!?  Well at least this movie isn’t trying so hard to make a faithful adaptation of the Mary Shelly story like Kenneth Branagh did, but is instead going after Young Frankenstein’s crown by practically making a spoof out of the whole thing.  Geez, if making a good Frankenstein movie was a herculean task, then making a good Young Frankenstein movie must be a Sisyphean one.  Still, the trailers really sold this as a fun throwback to old school horror schlock and it has two really talented actors who aren’t afraid to ham it up when appropriate.  Will this be a fun re-imaging of one of cinema’s oldest stories, or is this yet another terrible interpretation of this story right up there with the abysmal I, Frankenstein?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy) and Igor (Daniel Radcliffe), both working together to solve the mysteries of life and to hopefully reanimate a corpse for reasons of SCIENCE.  After breaking Igor out of the circus and fixing his back, they become close friends and Igor’s intelligence about humanity anatomy and medicine (self-taught which makes it more impressive) becomes instrumental to Victor finally having a breakthrough with his research.  Unfortunately, as Victor starts to escalate his experiments, an inspector at Scotland Yard (Andrew Scott) becomes more and more obsessed with stopping the mad man’s machinations before his schemes can come to fruition.  Can Igor and Victor complete they’re greatest work before being shut down by The Man, or has Victor taken things too far?  Will Igor continue to justify the mad doctor’s methods, or will he betray his best friend in hopes that he can be talked down from the brink of insanity?  These two are REALLY close, aren’t they?

VFCD1
Oh I WISH they’d pull the trigger on that!

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Victor Frankenstein” →