A self-taught critic and genuine movie geek
There’s a scene where Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds, Amazing Grace, also soon to be Aberforth Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter flick), while talking to reluctant student Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), asks him what he thinks of the exorcism class. Now that’s not a question you hear every day. Michael’s reply is that he doesn’t know what to make of it. I mention this because I don’t know what to make of the movie, either.
Being the King of England isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. No, seriously. Michael Gambon (Book of Eli) as George V sums it up nicely when he tells his younger son, the Duke of York (Colin Firth) that they’ve been reduced to actors. We’re used to that these days, but back in the 1930’s, people still remembered a time when being royal meant that you could levy taxes and declare wars — if not all by yourself, at least without too much trouble from Parliaments and Prime Ministers.
I knew going in that all the good stuff for this flick was already out there in the trailers. It just had this feel about it, you know? Apparently, though, most people don’t watch trailers before going to these things, because at least two-thirds of the audience laughed uproariously at the gas-gun incident. It was funny the first time, but I’d already seen it twelve times, and it just made me sigh.
Once upon a time, two crusading knights named Behmen (Nicolas Cage, Knowing) and Felson (Ron Perlman, Tangled) decided they’d had enough of being crusading knights when they figured out that the church was ordering them to slaughter women and children. I guess the infidels didn’t have many soldiers around, since Behman and Felson are crusading somewhere around 1347, and the last crusade technically ended in 1272.
Continue reading “Season of the Witch”
I have to admit, I only had a vague idea of the plot of Swan Lake before this. You don’t need to know it before you go, though; they explain it in the film rather a lot. For instance, Natalie Portman as ballerina Nina Sayers — and yeah, the Nina Ballerina thing is unfortunate — explains the ballet to a random guy she just met who’s clearly too busy trying to figure out how he can get into her pants to bother listening.